After two years in intense negotiations, shadowed by
on-off parallel talks with Turkey, Israel has agreed with European nations to
supply the European Union with its future natural gas needs. The project will
turn Israel into a significant fuel-exporting nation. It is expected that the
official signing will take place at a very public event some time in February
2019.
It
will take a year to put the financing in place. Then construction will begin on
the longest and deepest underwater fuel pipeline in the world. Some 2,100
kilometers in length and lying three kilometers under the Mediterranean Sea.
The $7 billion project will take five years to complete but could be in place
and ready to pump even sooner.
It
has been agreed that the financing will be operated through IGI Poseidon, a
subsidiary of the French company, Edison, which was involved with the
engineering feasibility studies and tests for this challenging project.
The
project will be known as the East Med Pipeline Project. Natural gas will flow
from Israel’s Leviathan offshore gas reservoir via Cyprus, Crete and Greece to
reach its terminal at Otranto on the southeast heel of Italy, 100 kilometers
south of Brindisi. This multinational pipeline will supply Europe with 125
billion cubic meters of natural gas annually by 2030. [emp]