Mohammad Tayseer, Yaacov Benmeleh
TEL AVIV (Bloomberg) -- A pipeline to transport $10 billion worth of natural gas over 15 years from Israel’s Leviathan field into Jordan will be completed by the end of 2019, according to the company buying the fuel.
Engineers building a 65-km (40-mi) pipeline from Jordan’s border with Israel northward across Mafraq province will finish their work on time to receive first gas from Leviathan at the start of 2020, Abdel Fattah Daradkeh, director general of Jordan’s National Electric Power Co., said in a phone interview. A section of pipeline to move gas from the offshore field through Israel to the border is also under construction, he said.
After years of legal and regulatory logjams, the companies developing Leviathan are making significant progress to honor multi-billion-dollar export deals. About 54% of the nearly $4-billion Leviathan project has been completed, the companies said this week. Jordan, with negligible energy resources of its own, would become Israel’s first buyer for gas from the Mediterranean reservoir.
