Israel, a Gas Power? (Part 2)
Pedro Canales
Israel’s military offensive in southern Lebanon and its “demand” that UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) must leave, reveals one of the strategic objectives of the Hebrew state: to push Lebanon’s official border to the Litani River (by replacing UNIFIL forces with its own army or by directly annexing the territory), and definitively annex the Karish and Qana gas wells, disputed between Tel Aviv and Beirut.
The offshore gas fields that Israel exploits in the eastern Mediterranean illegally, because they are located in the territorial waters of Gaza and Lebanon, as we saw in the previous article, complete the strategic map of energy resources that Israel possesses, making it a first-rate gas power, capable of fully self-supplying in energy sources and intervening in the global market as an exporter.
As we saw before, Israel has appropriated the Gaza Marine field, discovered in 1999 and initially exploited by British Gas and later by the Russian company Gazprom. Israel has forcibly seized 87% of Palestine’s territory and 80% of its territorial waters. The major military operations that Israel has carried out against Gaza, “Cast Lead,” “Echo Response,” and “Protective Edge,” since 2008, had as one of their main objectives to prevent the Palestinians from gaining control of the offshore fields.
Israel has done the same with the Lebanese fields, Karish and Qana-Sidon, located in territorial waters disputed between Israel and Lebanon, from which Tel Aviv takes the lion’s share of the profits.
These wells complete Israel’s map of fossil energy sources. However, the most important fields are Leviathan and Tamar, both located in Israel’s territorial waters, making the Hebrew state a top-tier regional and international exporter.
The Leviathan field, the largest existing in the Mediterranean Sea, is controlled by the multinational Chevron and the Israeli company New Med Energy. They began operating in 2019 and have reached a production capacity of 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year. Leviathan is the main hub of Israel’s export consortium.
The second most important field is Tamar. The Texas-based American oil company Noble Energy confirmed in 2009 the existence of large gas reserves. The exploitation project required an investment of $3 billion, provided by banks linked to the international Jewish lobby, such as JP Morgan and Citigroup in the United States, Barclays and HSBC in the United Kingdom.
The start of Israeli gas production led to a radical transformation of the country’s energy plan, which had until then depended on gas and coal imports from other countries.
After the discovery and exploitation of the Tamar field, another major discovery followed: Leviathan, whose facilities began to be built in 2017 after confirming that it had enough gas reserves to meet Israel’s consumption for 40 years. In 2020, production began: the two operations, Leviathan and Tamar, reached 10.85 billion cubic meters of gas in the first half of 2022, with a 22% increase compared to the previous year. 58% of Tamar’s production is destined for the Israeli domestic market, while the remaining 42% is exported. Israel consumes about 12 billion m³ annually and produces nearly 22 billion. Israel transitioned from being an energy island totally dependent on external sources to a net exporter.
Israel’s gas strategy is based on three main pillars: first, to meet its own domestic market; second, to export to neighboring countries and create dependencies, particularly with Jordan and Egypt; and third, to export to Europe. Israel, Egypt, and the European Union have agreed to use Egypt’s regasification plants to send gas to the European continent until 2030.
The dependence of its neighbors on gas supplies largely explains Egypt’s and Jordan’s inaction regarding the current massacres of Palestinians and Lebanese.
Israel’s other energy goal is to control the East Med pipeline. This project, officially named the Euro Asia Interconnector, financed with European public funds, aims to connect the Israeli city of Hadera, located 106 kilometers north of Gaza, to Greece via Cyprus. The pipeline will be supplied by the fields of Cyprus, Israel’s Leviathan field, and possibly by Gaza Marine fields.
But these are not the only pieces of the Israeli energy puzzle. There is also the Meged oil field, located in the West Bank under the supposed control of the Palestinian National Authority, with reserves estimated at around 1.5 billion barrels. Israel has been exploiting this field for years without any compensation to Palestine, in violation of international law, as 80% of the field is located in Palestinian territory.
Gas and oil are strategic weapons for Israel, which it will not relinquish under any circumstances.
