Israeli gas group in talks on pipelines to Turkey, Jordan, Egypt

JERUSALEM

A group of energy companies that discovered large amounts of natural gas off Israel’s Mediterranean coast said they were in talks to export the gas to Europe via a pipeline to Turkey, Reuters reported late Aug. 6.

They were also studying options to export gas to Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, Avner Oil & Gas said.

“The partners are negotiating with various officials,” Avner, one of the partners in the project, said.

A spokesman for Delek Group, the parent company for Avner and for Delek Drilling, said the group, led by Noble Energy, was already in advanced talks with companies in Turkey, Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority about buying Israeli gas and building pipelines, Reuters reported

Recoverable gas in the Levant Basin, which lies largely in Israeli and Cypriot waters in the eastern Mediterranean, holds some 3.5 trillion cubic meters of gas, the U.S. Geological Survey has estimated.

Egyptian official deny claims

Taher Abdel-Rahim, chairman of the Egyptian Gas Holding Company (EGAS), which runs Egypt’s gas pipeline network, dismissed the claims, Anadolu Agency reported yesterday. “We have not made such negotiations and will not go into talks in the meantime with any international companies about such proposals,” he said.

When it comes to cooperating with Israel on its energy projects, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız drew attention to the fact that first there was a need for political feasibility to talk about these projects’ technical feasibility in his comprehensive interview with Hürriyet Daily News on May. The minister recalled that there were signs of this political feasibility after Israel apologized to Turkey but he wanted to underline that these projects could never be presented as the reasons for this apology. “They may well be the consequences of this apology,” he stressed.