Israel and Egypt agree to build new gas pipeline
Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz met with his Egyptian counterpart, Tarek El-Molla, in Jerusalem on Sunday. During the visit, the two leaders agreed to build a pipeline to connect Israel's Leviathan natural gas field with liquefied natural gas terminals in northern Egypt.
The agreement would provide an opportunity for Israel to export liquefied natural gas to Europe through Egyptian plants and thus meet growing demand from the European continent. The EU, seeking to reduce its dependence on Russian gas, has encouraged the formation of new distribution routes, including through the eastern Mediterranean.
"I am excited to welcome Egypt's energy minister Tarek El-Molla. His visit is a direct continuation of the wonderful relationship between us and the successful cooperation on energy and natural gas issues," the Israeli minister said after the meeting. It is the first time an Egyptian minister who is not a foreign minister has visited Israel, and the first official trip by a member of Egypt's executive branch to Israel since 2016, according to local media reports.
The meeting was attended by National Security Council head Meir Ben-Shabbat, Egyptian gas company chairman Magdi Galal, Israel's ambassador to Egypt Amira Oron and Egypt's ambassador to Israel Khaled Azmi. Later, El-Molla also met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi.
The latter declared that Egypt is a strategic partner of Israel and has a key role to play in maintaining peace and stability in the Middle East. Netanyahu, for his part, admitted to the Egyptian minister that the discovery of gas in the Mediterranean is an "amazing opportunity" for cooperation between Israel, Egypt and other countries, both in energy and other matters, according to Kan public radio.
The meeting was also attended by the Palestinian president's adviser for economic affairs, Muhammad Mustafa. The agreement is part of a wider project that includes the participation of other states. The meeting was held in the framework of the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF). Egypt, Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Jordan and Italy signed the organisation's founding charter in January 2020, and the UAE has since joined.
The creation of this forum took place against a backdrop of tension in the eastern Mediterranean due to gas exploration by Turkey in waters disputed with Cyprus and Greece, which is still ongoing to this day. The agreement was also backed by the European Union, the United States and the World Bank.
The development of natural gas resources has been a boon to Israel's diplomatic position, especially in Mediterranean waters. The Leviathan gas field, located 130 km off the coast of Haifa in northern Israel, supplies the Israeli domestic market and exports gas to Jordan and Egypt. Its shareholders include US oil company Chevron and its Israeli counterpart Delek Drilling.
Discovered in 2010, the Leviathan field contains exploitable resources estimated at around 605 billion cubic metres of natural gas, according to estimates made by the US-Israeli consortium. However, the expansion of the project comes at the same time as one of the country's worst ecological disasters, and amid criticism from activists over its anti-environmental practices.
Israel yesterday closed all its beaches until further notice, a week after an offshore oil spill deposited tonnes of tar on more than 160 kilometres of coastline. Thousands of volunteers took to the beaches to help with the clean-up and several were hospitalised after inhaling toxic fumes.
The fruition of this agreement contrasts with the outcome of negotiations launched in December 2019 between Israel and Turkey. Israeli officials initiated a series of talks with Ankara to build a pipeline linking Israeli fields with Turkish plants to facilitate exports to Europe.
However, the negotiations failed to reach a successful conclusion and Israel eventually initialled a 12 billion euro deal with Egypt last year to provide it with an estimated 66 billion litres of gas over the next decade. A move that exacerbated the rivalry between Ankara and Cairo that began after Erdogan's support for the Muslim Brotherhood after they were ousted from power in Egypt.