Cyprus, Israel explore gas
link By Robert M Cutler
MONTREAL - Israel and the Republic of
Cyprus moved closer in their cooperation on
development of undersea gas deposits in their
respective exclusive economic zones last week with
the visit of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu to Nicosia.
Netanyahu's visit,
the historic first of an Israeli leader to the
Republic of Cyprus, marked further evolution of
the rapprochement between the two states, with
cooperation in the agriculture, tourism and
science sectors also on the agenda.
The
Eastern Mediterranean Sea is considered to be a
generally underexplored energy province. The
Cypriot and Israeli strikes all fall within the
perimeter of the greater Levant Basin, a
triangular salient of the sea between the two
countries that may hold, according to an estimate
by the US Geological Survey, as much
as 3.4 trillion cubic
meters of natural gas and 1.7 million barrels of
gas condensate.
The lead company in both
the Cypriot and Israeli consortia that have made
separate strikes is the same, the US-based Noble
Energy.
The two countries "are looking at
the possibility - we haven't taken a decision -
about a 40-kilometer pipeline between the two
findings" off their respective coasts, Netanyahu
told a joint press conference with Cypriot
President Demetris Christofias, as quoted by
Bloomberg News. Netanyahu further indicated that
the gas could be liquefied in either Cyprus or
Israel and then exported either to Europe (through
Cyprus) or to Asia (through Israel).
A
two-month joint study has been launched to find
the best ways to translate the intention to
cooperate into a pragmatic plan for substantive
economic cooperation. It will lead in the first
instance to agreements on the demarcation, usage
and exploitation of resources by each of the two
sides.
Netanyahu, in reference to the
possibility that such energy projects might in
future be scaled up in size, said "a regional
approach perhaps beginning with cooperation
between Cyprus and Israel could extend to others
if they chose to enter it". Agence France-Presse
reported.
Netanyahu's visit follows by
less than a month a business forum that brought
entrepreneurs from Cyprus and Israel together in
Tel Aviv to discuss their common interest in the
latest developments in gas exploration
developments. Representatives of the real estate
and tourism sectors in Israel also attended.
In December 2011, Noble announced that it
has found probably between 180 billion and 285
billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas in Block
12 of Cyprus' exclusive economic zone (EEZ). This
is reportedly to be enough to supply the island's
domestic consumption for over two centuries.
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is for
geo-economic reasons likelier than pipelines to
promote exports, but the Cypriot deposit is not
quite big enough to make that worthwhile, so
cooperation is possible involving nearby strikes
in the Israeli EEZ in the Eastern Mediterranean.
In particular, the Leviathan deposit there is
estimated to hold 700 bcm of gas plus 4.2 billion
barrels of oil.
The once-united Cyprus has
been divided into a Greek Cypriot south and a
Turkish Cypriot ever since 1974, when Turkish
military landed on the island in response to the
attempt by Greek Cypriot officers to unite Cyprus
with the Greek mainland by overthrowing the
country's president Archbishop Makarios, primate
of the autocephalous Cypriot Orthodox Church and
ethnarch of the Greek Cypriots.
Since
then, the immigration of thousand of poor peasants
from the Anatolian mainland has definitively
altered the culture of the island's
Turkish-speaking population in the north of the
island and complicated the politics of
reunification.
Cyprus is a member of the
European Union, but the EU does not recognize the
authority in the northern third of the island,
which styles itself the Turkish Republic of
Northern Cyprus and is recognized only by Ankara.
The EU officially recognizes the sovereignty of
the government in Nicosia over the whole of the
island although its law can be enforced only in
the south.
Soon after the Greek Cypriot
administration began exploratory drilling in
September 2011, Turkey signed an oil and gas
exploration agreement with the Turkish Cypriot
administration and sent a seismic research ship
into the area in preparation for drilling with a
military escort.
The press sometimes
erroneously reports that Lebanon claims a piece of
the action. While some Lebanese political figures
made threatening statements against Israel over
the resource development a few years ago, Lebanon
officially and formally indicated in August 2010
that it considers the Leviathan gas field to be
fully within Israel's EEZ.
Greek-Israeli
relations began to improve in the late 1990s, but
their recent marked amelioration (as well as that
of Cypriot-Israeli relations) is the natural
result of Turkey's degradation under Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of its own relations
with Israel. Netanyahu and then-Greek prime
minister George Papandreou exchanged visits in
summer 2010. In late summer 2011, their two
countries signed a mutual defense agreement in
addition to an accord on oil and gas exploration
in the waters around Cyprus.
Dr
Robert M Cutler (http://www.robertcutler.org),
educated at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and The University of Michigan, has
researched and taught at universities in the
United States, Canada, France, Switzerland, and
Russia. Now senior research fellow in the
Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian
Studies, Carleton University, Canada, he also
consults privately in a variety of fields.
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