Israel eyes gas reserves in contested waters

A reserve of at least 50,000 billion cubic feet of natural gas may lay untapped off the coast of Israel, according to OilPrice.com. The question is, who will claim it?

|
Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor/File
A drilling rig, rig 259, is drilling for natural gas just outside Wyalusing, Pa., in this March 2012 file photo. A large natural gas reserve off the coast of Israel could be a huge windfall for Israel, or a potential conflict, according to OilPrice.com.

The Middle East, source of much of the world’s hydrocarbons, is one of the most volatile regions on earth, where energy issues impact international relations. From Iraqi oil output, still struggling to reach its 2003 pre-invasion levels through Iran’s sanctioned nuclear program, the region focuses the world’s attention like nowhere else.

Now another issue is complicating the mix, Israeli natural gas production.

Like Turkey, Israel is a net energy importer – according to the CIA, in 2010 Israel produced a mere 4,029 barrels per day of oil, but imported 238,000 bpd.
Natural gas? In 2009, Israel produced 1.55 billion cubic meters, but consumed 3.25 bcm. Israel imports all of its oil and coal and 70 percent of its natural gas needs, leaving the government deeply interested in developing indigenous alternatives, especially as the “Arab Spring” led to Egypt halting its natural gas exports.

Which is why for the last several years Israel has been so excited about potentially huge natural gas discoveries.

But the bad news is that they are in the eastern Mediterranean, in contested waters claimed by not only Israel, but the Palestinian Authority, the Republic of Cyprus and Turkey. At issue is each country's claim to its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) under the Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which came into force in November 1994. Under UNCLOS III, a nation can claim an EEZ of 200 nautical miles from its coastline.
In March 2010 the U.S. Geological Survey released its survey of the Levant Basin, which concluded that the waters of Israel, Lebanon and Republic of Cyprus potentially contained at least 50,000 billion cubic feet of natural gas yet to be discovered and that in total the Levant Basin could contain as many as 227,430 billion cubic feet of natural gas and 483 million barrels of oil. Accordingly, it is no less a question of what lays beneath the waves, but whom it might belong to. (RELATED: Big Oil Funding U.S. Politics)

Companies are already moving to exploit the reserves. In February Israel's Delek Group, Ltd. announced that it has discovered what it estimated to be close to 1.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in Israeli waters near the Lebanese border. Delek is working in cooperation with the U.S. company Noble Energy. Israel is attempting to press forward to the swift development of its Mediterranean offshore natural gas assets, the Tamar field, discovered in 2009 and Leviathan, discovered the following year. In June 2011 an Israeli company announced the discovery of two new natural gas fields, Sarah and Mira, about 45 miles off the city of Hadera, while Noble Energy announced that drilling in the 125 square-mile Israeli Leviathan-1 offshore Mediterranean natural gas field had “the potential to position Israel as a natural gas exporting nation.” Initial prospecting estimates of the Tamar and Leviathan fields off Haifa, concluded that the two sites between them could hold as much as 688 billion cubic meters of recoverable natural gas.

Accordingly, the Israeli Cabinet is about to undertake the thorny issue of how to defend the country’s Mediterranean EEZ, a mission that will vastly extend the traditional purview of the Israel Defense Force well beyond its traditional nautical frontiers to up to 100 miles from Israel’s coastline. (RELATED: Smart Sponge Holds the Key to Cleaning Fracking Water)

Will it be patrol aircraft? More surface vessels? Submarines? Whatever form it takes, the sticker shock is already in, as the projected cost of the new equipment necessary for defending the offshore hydrocarbon reserves is estimated at $718 million, with estimated annual operating expenses of roughly $123 million.

Given regional volatility, the reluctance of foreign energy investors to enter conflict zones, the significant cost of protecting any energy facilities, while it is at best rash to make predictions about the Middle East, it does seem safe to say that Israel’s dreams of energy autonomy remain exactly that for the moment – dreams.

Source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Israels-Offshore-Gas-Reserves-Bonanza-or-Security-Threat.html 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Israel eyes gas reserves in contested waters
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2012/0925/Israel-eyes-gas-reserves-in-contested-waters
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe