On June 11, 1973, Israeli prime minister Golda Meir held a state dinner for German chancellor Willy Brandt.
“Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses,” she said, as she toasted him. “He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil.”
Until a mere 20 years ago, no one suspected that vast quantities of natural gas lay beneath Israel’s coastal waters. It was 2004 before the very first field, lying off Ashdod, was connected to the shore. Then, in January 2009, came the discovery of the Tamar natural gas field holding an estimated reserve of 300 billion cubic meters (bcm). It began supplying gas to Israel’s domestic market in 2013.
In December 2010 came the discovery of the world’s largest natural gas reserves in a decade. Lying in Israeli coastal waters and projected to contain 620 bcm of natural gas, it was named Leviathan. The development of Leviathan, which started in 2016, has allowed Israel for the first time in its history to export a substantial amount of gas to neighboring countries.
Development has not stopped.
As recently as May 9, the British natural gas company Energean announced the discovery of another marine natural gas reservoir containing an estimated 60 bcm of natural gas. This new discovery brings Israel’s proven gas reserves to nearly a trillion cubic meters (tcm). A conservative estimate of extractable natural gas yet to be discovered amounts to at least another 500 bcm. This means that for the foreseeable future, Israel will easily be able to supply its domestic needs and have a great deal of gas left to export.
Israel’s rapidly developing gas export market represents a timely boon for the EU, which is engaged on a determined effort to reduce dependence on supply from Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine. Russia supplied about 40% of the bloc’s gas imports last year.
On June 15, Israel’s energy minister, Karine Elharrar, together with her opposite numbers in the EU and Egypt, signed a historic Memorandum of Understanding that will see Israel exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe for the first time. The arrangement will run for three years in the first instance, and can be extended for two more.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission who was present at the signing ceremony, said the MoU was “a big step forward in the energy supply to Europe that would put an end to EU’s dependence on Russian fossil fuel.” The EU declared that it would also help Egypt and Israel increase gas production and exploration in their respective territorial waters.
The MoU envisages that gas from Israel will be brought via a pipeline to two LNG terminals on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, where significant quantities will be liquefied and transported on tankers to Europe.
Another method of transporting gas from the Eastern Mediterranean would be through undersea pipelines. Just such a concept, dubbed the EastMed, intended to transfer natural gas from Israeli waters to Europe via Greece and Cyprus through a 1,900 km pipeline, was announced in 2016, and several agreements were signed between the three countries. The project, estimated to take 10 years to build at a cost of $6 billion, had not succeeded in securing the necessary funding when in April the US withdrew its previous support, and it was shelved.
“We don’t need to wait for 10 years and spend billions of dollars on this stuff,” said US Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. “We need to move the gas now. And we need to use gas today as a transition to a greener future. Ten years from now, we don’t want a pipeline. Ten years from now, we want to be green.”
Despite the current US position on EastMed, the MoU mentions that the feasibility of the pipeline should be explored. Ursula von der Leyen even said that it will “hopefully one day become a hydrogen-ready pipeline.”
US President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw support for it may have been influenced by a parallel, and extremely ambitious scheme, which has received EU financing to the tune of $732 million. The EuroAsia interconnector is a project designed to connect the electricity networks of Cyprus and Greece as the first step in linking the power grids of Israel, Cyprus, Greece and Europe. A 1,208 km. undersea cable will create an “energy highway,” ensuring a secure supply of electricity from Cypriot and Israeli gas reserves as well as from renewable energy sources. Construction is planned to begin this year, be completed by the end of 2025, and be commissioned in the first half of 2026.
On April 27, Gina Cohen, a renowned expert on the international gas market, appeared before the European Parliament in Brussels. The EU is reportedly aiming to put a complete stop to Russian gas imports by 2027. In her presentation, Cohen discussed the practicalities involved in replacing Russian with East Mediterranean gas. Most obvious are the need to continue developing the vast gas fields in the region, as well as ways of transporting the gas to Europe.
Later presenting her findings to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Cohen is reported to have said that it is up to the Israeli leadership to rise to this challenge and decide quickly to move ahead with technical solutions to the problem of transferring gas to Europe.
“The Israeli leadership gives the impression that it does not understand the strategic importance of our natural gas reservoirs. We need to realize this potential and promote the sale of gas to Europe.”
Gina Cohen
“The Israeli leadership gives the impression that it does not understand the strategic importance of our natural gas reservoirs,” she is reported as saying. “We need to realize this potential and promote the sale of gas to Europe.”
Cohen envisages that the operation would extend over a period of 20 years, and bring at least $30 billion into the country. She identified several ways of transporting gas from Israel to Europe. One could be to lay an underwater pipeline to Turkey, to join up with Turkey’s existing pipeline to Europe. A second is to lay a pipeline directly from the gas fields at sea to liquefaction plants in Egypt. A third option is developing the EastMed pipeline project from Israel to Greece and Italy by way of Cyprus.
The choice that Cohen supports is for Israel to create its own offshore liquefaction facilities at sea. This option, she believes, would make Israel completely independent in the export of gas, no longer having to rely on Egypt or Turkey. This is not a “pie in the sky” idea, she says, pointing to five such offshore liquefaction facilities that are already operational in the world today. She urges the government to act swiftly and get liquefaction facilities to Israel’s reserve gas fields at sea as quickly as possible.
“Little Israel is becoming a significant player in the global energy market,” said Elharrar, signing the MoU.
The future looks even brighter. ■