Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday flew to Greece, where he was set to sign an agreement for a huge pipeline project with Cyprus and Greece that is designed to ship gas from the eastern Mediterranean to Europe.
The move comes amid tensions with Turkey over its own activities in the area and a contentious maritime deal with Libya, expanding Ankara’s claims over a large gas-rich area of the sea.
“We are going to an important summit with the president of Cyprus and the new Prime Minister of Greece,” Netanyahu told the press before boarding his plane.
The EastMed pipeline deal, to be signed in Athens on Thursday evening by the prime minister and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, will “bring hundreds of billions” into state coffers, Netanyahu predicted.
“We have established an alliance in the Middle East, an alliance that is of enormous importance to the energy future of Israel, to it becoming an energy power, and for stability in the region,” Netanyhau said.
The 2,000-kilometer (1,200-mile) pipeline will be able to transfer nine to 12 billion cubic meters a year from offshore gas reserves between Israel and Cyprus to Greece, and then on to Italy and other southeastern European countries.
The discovery of hydrocarbon reserves in the eastern Mediterranean has sparked a scramble for the energy riches and a dispute between Cyprus and Turkey, which has occupied the north of the Mediterranean island since 1974 in response to a coup sponsored by the Greek military junta.
Turkey already faces European Union sanctions over ships searching for oil and gas off Cyprus, whose internationally recognized government in Nicosia is not recognized by Ankara.
The EastMed project is expected to make Cyprus, Greece and Israel key links in Europe’s energy supply chain and aims to stymie Turkey’s effort to extend its control to the eastern Mediterranean.
Earlier this week Israel began operations at the Leviathan offshore platform, paving the way for the rig to begin extracting an estimated 22 trillion cubic feet of gas trapped under the sea. Concerns over the launch of the gas rig prompted thousands of Israelis on Tuesday to leave their homes, claiming that they faced dangerous levels of pollution.
Despite the newly announced U.S. sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 project, Russia says it will build and launch next year the natural gas pipeline that has divided Europe for half a decade.
With Nord Stream 2, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will have several major natural gas projects completed in the past few years, Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist Leonid Bershidsky writes.
These projects will complete Putin’s plan to have Moscow not only continue holding a large share of gas supplies to Europe, but branch out Russian gas exports to the fastest growing gas import market, China, and seize a growing share of the global liquefied natural gas (LNG) market
Nord Stream 2 is the latest project in Putin’s plan for energy and geopolitical dominance in the world. Russia already holds a third of Europe’s gas imports. Nord Stream 2, when completed—because Russia believes it will be completed next year despite the sanctions—is set to further solidify Moscow’s reach into the north European market bypassing Ukraine.
Before Nord Stream 2, Russia will have launched TurkStream, through which Russia’s gas giant Gazprom will carry pipeline gas to Turkey and south and southeastern Europe—a region already heavily dependent on Russian gas supplies. Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are set to officially launch the TurkStream gas pipeline on January 8.
Early in December, Gazprom—which also leads the Nord Stream 2 project to carry Russian gas to Germany—launched the huge Power of Siberia pipeline project to deliver gas to China, whose gas consumption and imports are only set to increase over the coming years and decades.
Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Friday that Gazprom would launch Nord Stream 2 by the end of 2020. One of Gazprom’s options to continue pipelaying while under sanctions is using a vessel that is currently in the Far East, Novak said, noting that retrofitting the ship could take “some time.”
Despite the now inevitable delay of Nord Stream 2, Russia looks beyond the next few months as Putin has laid the foundations of global gas export dominance.
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