Turkish company offers Israel to build pipeline

Ömer Bilge NICOSIA - Hürriyet

Turcas Holding has offered Israel for the construction of a 470-kilometers-long pipeline between Israel and Turkey with an offer worth $2.5 billion. DAILY NEWS photo, Hasan ALTINIŞIK

Turkey’s Turcas Holding has submitted a $2.5 billion offer to Israel for the construction of a 470-kilometer pipeline between Israel and Turkey.

Istanbul-based Turcas Holding has offered Israel, which has started to discover considerable amounts of natural gas in the eastern Mediterranean, to build a pipeline under the sea from Israel to Turkey’s southern province of Mersin. A member of the board, Mathew Bryza announced the offer worth $2.5 billion during an energy conference held in Greek Cyprus. 

Byrza, a former American diplomat, said the 470-kilometers-long pipeline would have a capacity to transfer 16 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year. He also stressed that if the political problems between Turkey and Israel affected the construction, all cost and responsibility would be assumed by Turcas. 

Besides, Israeli daily Globes said Turkey’s Zorlu Group was also in talks with Israel for pipeline building and buying natural gas. Globus said Zorlu, which was constructing a power plant in the Ashkelon province of Israel, contacted the companies that had shares in Israel’s natural gas region Leviathan and made offers for buying natural gas and constructing a pipeline. 

Israel’s government in June approved limiting natural gas exports to about 40 percent of the country’s newly-discovered offshore reserves. Two of the world’s largest offshore fields found in the past decade lie in Israeli waters. Tamar, with an estimated 280 bcm, was discovered in 2009, and a year later Leviathan was found, with an estimated 530 bcm.