A new off-shore gas field has just been discovered in northern Israel by the Israeli company Energean. A boon as the Jewish state is seriously considering exporting natural gas to Europe. “We cannot replace Russian gas, but we can participate in the diversification of Europe’s supply of natural gas via Egyptian liquefied gas (LNG) facilities or by building our own LNG station, explains Yossi Abou, P – CEO of the Israeli company New Med Energy, a historical player in this sector. After all, there is still great potential: only 25% of the Israeli exclusive economic zone has been explored”.
New Med Energy estimates that, within two to four years, its offshore fields in Israel and Cyprus could deliver around 20 billion cubic meters (BCM) per year to Europe, or 13% of volume of current Russian gas. And Egypt is also in a position to increase its production thanks to the Zhor deposit, the largest in the eastern Mediterranean to date (850 BCM).
A new natural gas field since 1999
For, over the past twenty years, the eastern Levantine basin has become a new field for the exploitation of natural gas. Israel was the first state in the region to discover a deposit, in 1999. This constitutes a real revolution for the Jewish state, or rather two: one energy, the other geopolitics. Since then, Israel has become not only self-sufficient in energy consumption but also an exporter. Thus, the production of Leviathan, the largest Israeli deposit, is distributed as follows: one third for domestic consumption, one third for Egypt and one third for Jordan. For more than 50 years, Israel was totally energy dependent. Today, 70% of its electricity comes from its own gas, 10% from renewable energies and 20% from imported coal. Natural gas has therefore become a geostrategic lever for Israel, which is part of the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum, created in 2019, bringing together Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Greece, Cyprus, Italy and France.
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