Chevron, the American oil giant, wrapped up the acquisition on Monday of a relatively small Houston-based company called Noble Energy, paying about $4 billion.
Until recently, the deal would have been unlikely, if not unthinkable — because what distinguishes Noble is the large natural gas business it has built in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, especially in Israel, an area that major oil companies had until now avoided.
Chevron’s move is the latest milestone in a remarkable shift in perceptions about a relatively new region for the petroleum industry in the eastern Mediterranean. Once a dead sea for the oil industry, this area, reaching from the Nile Delta in Egypt up to Israel and Lebanon and around Cyprus, has come alive with exploration vessels, drilling rigs and production platforms in recent years thanks to a series of large natural gas discoveries.
NICOSIA, Cyprus — France's defense minister said Tuesday that her country stands in solidarity with Cyprus amid tensions over a Turkish search for natural gas inside Cypriot waters.
Florence Parly said France supports Cyprus, which finds itself under “strong pressure.”
“France is a friend of Cyprus," Parly told The Associated Press after talks with Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades. “And we also express our solidarity regarding, for instance, what's going on in the EEZ" — Cyprus' exclusive economic zone.
Turkey has sent warship-escorted vessels to drill for gas in waters where Cyprus has exclusive economic rights, including areas where the Cypriot government has licensed energy companies Total of France and Italy's Eni to carry out exploratory drilling.
European Union member Cyprus has denounced Turkey's actions as a flagrant violation of its sovereign rights and of international law. The EU has also rebuked Turkey over the drilling.
NICOSIA, Cyprus — Cyprus won't put its exploratory gas drilling plans on hold despite Turkey's attempt to force the east Mediterranean island nation to halt its activities by conducting its own gas search in Cypriot waters, the president of Cyprus said Sunday.
President Nicos Anastasiades said pausing drilling in the face of Turkish pressure would be tantamount to Cyprus abrogating its sovereign rights.
Anastasiades said he was ready to engage with Turkey on charting a course to a deal that would reunify Cyprus, which has been divided into ethnically Greek and Turkish areas since the 1970s.
But that won't happen if Turkey sets preconditions such as the suspension of offshore drilling for such peace talks to take place, he said.
NICOSIA, Cyprus — Cyprus' defense minister says the east Mediterranean island nation and neighbor Egypt are exchanging information to bolster security around an offshore search for natural gas as part of enhanced defense ties.
Savvas Angelides says the two neighbors' information-sharing extends to countering any extremist threats.
The Cypriot minister says defense ties are also being upgraded between Cyprus, Egypt and Greece as through joint military exercises and personnel exchanges.
Angelides was speaking Wednesday after escorting his counterpart, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Ahmed Zaki, to a meeting with Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades.
Cyprus and Egypt share a sea border delineating their respective exclusive economic zones where each country is carrying out exploratory gas drilling.
Officials said a recent discovery of Egypt's Zohr gas field bodes well for more discoveries in Cypriot waters.
7/7/2019 Clifford Krauss Low prices, environmental and political considerations taken into account as country decides whether to exploit natural resource For decades, Israel was an energy-starved country surrounded by hostile, oil-rich neighbours.
Now it has a different problem. Thanks to major offshore discoveries over the past decade, it has more natural gas than it can use or readily export.
Having plenty of gas is hardly a burden, and it offers a cleaner-burning alternative to Israel’s longtime power sources. But it presents challenges for a country that wants to extract geopolitical and economic benefits from a rare energy windfall, including building better relations with its neighbours and Europe.
Part of the problem is timing. Just as Israel prepares to produce and export large amounts of gas, the United States, Australia, Qatar and Russia are flooding the market with cheap gas. The other is maths: Israel’s 8.5 million people use in a year less than 1 per cent of the gas that has been found in the country’s waters.
CAIRO — President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi likes to flaunt his plans for modernizing Egypt, like the flashy new administrative capital rising from the desert outside Cairo. But most Egyptians view his rule as a time of painful belt-tightening, with soaring inflation, a currency crash and cuts to subsidies that have made fuel, electricity and water more expensive.
Now there is a ray of hope emerging a hundred miles offshore.
It comes in the form of a windfall natural gas discovery with the potential to lift Egypt’s limping economy, build a new commercial alliance with Israel and maybe, even, revive the country’s diminished regional clout.
Egypt’s gas push is part of a tectonic shift in energy and geopolitics. Natural gas, long a poor cousin to oil, is gaining importance and becoming a tool for countries to leverage power and prestige. Advances in the shipping of liquefied gas have made it a global fuel and strengthened the hand of countries that until recently were not major energy exporters, including the United States and now Egypt.
NICOSIA, Cyprus — Europe stands to gain from an agreement Egypt is set to sign with the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus to pipe offshore natural gas to processing plants in the north African country where it will be liquefied for export, Egypt's oil minister said Tuesday.
Tarek el-Molla said that under the terms of the agreement, gas off Cyprus could also be used for Egypt's domestic needs.
"So it is really a way to have ... good, win-win positions for not only Cyprus and Egypt, but also for Europe," El-Molla told reporters after talks with Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades.
Cyprus' energy minister, Georgios Lakkotrypis, called the agreement— to be signed Wednesday — a first of its kind for the region that could bolster Europe's energy security.
Lakkotrypis said the agreement could act as an example for other neighboring countries to offer oil and gas companies the kind of security on their investment so they can proceed with projects worth billions.
The Cypriot minister said the agreement concerns building a pipeline from the Aphrodite deposit — estimated to contain around 4.5 trillion cubic feet (130 billion cubic meters) of gas — to Egypt. But it can apply to other gas fields that may be discovered off the island in the future.
"This is a European pipeline because the natural gas that will be conveyed to Egypt from Aphrodite, after the commercial agreements are completed, will find its way to Europe in liquefied form," Lakkotrypis said.
Talks to hammer out a commercial deal for the pipeline will start soon, he said.
Italian company Eni has discovered another gas deposit southwest of Cyprus, but its size hasn't been determined yet. ExxonMobil will begin a hydrocarbon search off Cyprus later this year. France's Total is also licensed to search for gas.
NICOSIA, Cyprus — Newly discovered gas deposits in the eastern Mediterranean can offer Europe the alternative sources of energy that it's searching for, Egypt's president said Monday.
President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said that Europe can take advantage of the proximity of both Egypt and Cyprus to the continent in that energy search.
"These gas discoveries can contribute to the European continent's search for alternative energy sources, taking advantage of the position of Egypt and Cyprus," El-Sissi said after talks with his Cypriot counterpart.
Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades said his country will promote closer relations between Egypt and the European Union, calling Egypt an "absolutely necessary strategic partner" for the 28-member bloc on issues like energy, migration and combating extremism.
Saturday, January 14, 2017 10:00 pmPeter Barker ABOARD THE ATWOOD ADVANTAGE — In the ship’s control room, facing four video screens, a driller from Mississippi in dark shades and a black baseball cap with a skull on it held what could be the future of Israel in his hands.
The massive drill he controlled extended down 11,345 feet, more than 2 miles below the surface of a calm Mediterranean Sea, as it plunged deeper and deeper into one of the biggest natural gas fields discovered in the world in recent years.
Once a barren energy island in a part of the planet otherwise awash in resources, Israel is, after years of delay, finally pushing ahead with an ambitious strategy to tap offshore reserves that could transform its economy and, it hopes, its place in a historically hostile region.
If all goes according to plan, Israel will not only become largely energy-independent, it will also supply neighbors that will have new reason to be friends.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS OCT. 31, 2016, 12:40 P.M. E.D.T.
CAIRO — Egypt's state news agency says the country's oil ministry has signed a memorandum of understanding with its Iraqi counterpart to pave the way for Egypt to import oil from Iraq.
Oil Minister Tarek el-Mulla was quoted by MENA on Monday as saying that the agreement will "open the doors" for developing oil cooperation with Iraq.
His Iraqi counterpart, Jabar al-Luaibi, says that the agreement prepares the way for wide cooperation, including on Iraqi oil exports to Egypt. He says Iraq offered Egypt the opportunity to invest in 12 Iraqi oil fields.
The deal comes nearly three weeks after Saudi Arabia's abrupt decision to halt previously agreed oil shipments to Egypt, putting heavy pressure on the government. Egypt angered the Saudis by voting in favor of Russia's draft resolution on Syria.
SAN DONATO MILANESE, Italy — A drilling ship working about 120 miles off the Egyptian coast for Eni, the Italian oil company based here, bored into a giant trove of natural gas in July 2015 that turned out to be the largest discovery ever in the Mediterranean Sea and by far the largest by the global petroleum industry that year.
The find, called Zohr, meaning “noon” in Arabic, was the source of enormous relief and even elation at Eni, which had risked $70 million to drill a well in an area where Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch company, had previously drilled 10 without success.
Eni’s chief executive, Claudio Descalzi, let the drilling go ahead — despite serious misgivings inside the company — because some of his geologists were convinced that Shell and other rivals might have missed something big.
“It was a very emotional moment,” said Mr. Descalzi. “We tried to look outside the box.”
LONDON — Israel’s energy minister laid on the charm as he spoke to a few dozen oil executives, contractors and analysts in a crowded hotel conference room about the country’s natural gas prospects.
He crowed that the country could one day be a top supplier to Europe, while explaining how multinationals in other industries were already enamored of Israel.
“It is not enough to have a lot of potential,” said the minister, Yuval Steinitz, who was kicking off a road show for energy investors on Thursday at the Copthorne Tara Hotel in London. “From now on it is my job to make Israel very attractive for new exploration, for new investments, for newcomers.”
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NICOSIA, Cyprus — The Cyprus government has renewed an agreement with Italian energy company Eni and its South Korean partner KOGAS to search for oil and gas in waters off the Mediterranean island's southern coast. Eni said in August that it discovered off Egypt's coast what it called the biggest gas field ever found in the Mediterranean sea. Cyprus Energy Minister Yiorgos Lakkotrypis says Eni's license to search in three areas has been extended to February 2018. He said after a Cabinet meeting Monday exploratory drilling could begin sometime in 2017, but a consortium study is still in its preliminary stage. Earlier this month, French energy company Total also renewed its license to search for oil and gas off Cyprus for two more years. SOURCE -- same story from different source ENI licence renewed | in-cyprus.com (Cyprus Weekly) incyprus — 28/12/2015
The Cabinet on Monday ratified a two-year extension of Italian and South Korean consortium ENI-KOGAS’ licence to explore for hydrocarbons on Cyprus’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Speaking to reporters after the Cabinet meeting which was held at the presidential retreat in Troodos, Energy Minister George Lakkotrypis said the decision provides for a two-year extension, until February 2018, in order for ENI to re-evaluate the energy potential, especially now, following the developments in the Egyptian EEZ with the discovery of the Zohr deposit.” The company had asked for an extension earlier in 2015. Once the proper legal framework to satisfy the request was found, the Ministry of Energy was given the go-ahead to begin negotiating with the consortium. Lakkotrypis said the extension concerns exploration licences in blocks 2, 3 and 9 of Cyprus’ EEZ. According to the minister, ENI has a large team working on the geological models of blocks 2, 3 and 9, and “I expect and hope that we will have the first results of this reassessment by the end of January.” “Based on the preliminary plan that we received a few months ago, a new round of drilling is expected to begin mid-2017,” the minister said. SOURCE
The Italian energy company Eni knew it was taking a big risk this summer when it spent $60 million on an exploratory rig and began drilling more than 100 miles off the coast ofEgypt.
Eni’s gamble worked. The company, using drilling rights from the Egyptian government, found what it called a “supergiant” natural gas field. It may be the largest discovery yet in the Mediterranean and is one of the world’s biggest new gas finds in years.
Eni will need to drill more wells to prove its claim that the field, which it calls Zohr, holds up to 30 trillion cubic feet of gas. That could be worth about $100 billion, even when taking into account current low energy prices. But the promise of Zohr — the Arabic word for noon — is already brightening the prospects of the Egyptian economy, which has been benighted by an energy shortage and years of political turmoil.
As with so many things in the Middle East, however, the discovery of the gas field has geopolitical repercussions. And it has thrust Eni’s chief executive, Claudio Descalzi, into the role of shuttle diplomat.
Egypt’s becoming more energy-independent could sidetrack efforts — backed by the United States — to use energy diplomacy to improve relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Israel has its own ambitions for offshore natural gas, including a long-gestating plan to sell gas to Egypt.
Mr. Descalzi met recently with the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, to discuss next steps. And on Thursday, the Eni chief plans to visit Jerusalem in an effort to persuade the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that there are still opportunities for Egypt and Israel to jointly prosper by developing their gas fields.
Even before the Zohr discovery, Israeli officials had been divided over how to proceed on the gas front. And the government has been distracted lately by a wave of violence between Israelis and Palestinians.
But Mr. Descalzi says he envisions Israel and Egypt eventually collaborating, exporting gas to Europe and other parts of the world, perhaps in the form of transportable liquefied natural gas. He notes that nearby Cyprus, where another offshore gas field has been found, might be another candidate for a regional partnership.
The Zohr field “has created a big opportunity,” Mr. Descalzi said in a recent interview. “We can make a big eastern Mediterranean hub.”
In written answers to questions from The New York Times, the Egyptian minister of petroleum and mineral resources, Tarek el-Molla, outlined a similar vision. “Egypt is eligible to play a significant strategic role with regard to gas discoveries in the East Mediterranean region,” Mr. Molla wrote.
Not everyone shares that optimism. But the Egyptian economy could use the lift.
Egypt has a per-capita income of about $3,500 and is growing only about 3 percent a year. That is far too slow for the country to climb the development curve quickly enough to meet the needs of its 82 million people — and it is below the 5 percent growth rate achieved before the ouster of the country’s longtime ruler, Hosni Mubarak, in 2011.
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Claudio Descalzi, the chief executive of Eni, has been thrust into the role of shuttle diplomat after the discovery of the gas field in Egypt.CreditJacques Brinon/Associated Press
The Mubarak government, whatever its growth record, made Egypt an energy underachiever, even though the Nile Delta holds ample deposits of both oil and gas, which have long attracted foreign energy companies. While not an OPEC member, Egypt is a relatively significant producer of oil, extracting about 700,000 barrels a day — similar to Malaysia and Argentina.
But the Mubarak government’s efforts to appease the populace by keeping energy prices artificially low had an unintended drawback: It diminished market incentives for the foreign companies that extracted much of the oil and gas. The Egyptian government also tended to be slow to pay the companies, further damping their enthusiasm. That is why Egypt has had to import oil and gas in recent years to meet its needs.
The government of Mr. Sisi, who took power in 2013, has tried to fix that problem by raising domestic fuel prices and by cutting its back payments to oil companies by about half, to less than $3 billion. Earlier this year, the energy giant BP agreed to spend $12 billion to develop a large quantity of offshore gas for the Egyptian market. Now, the Eni discovery might stoke further interest in exploration, analysts say.
With a big new supply of natural gas, Egypt might be able to stop burning oil to generate electricity and start exporting the petroleum instead. New domestic supplies of natural gas would help conserve scarce foreign currency resources and might spur investment in gas-fired factories and electric power plants. And natural gas exports might follow.
“Egypt has undergone a remarkable transformation of fortunes — it looks like it has got its energy policy back on track,” said Martijn Murphy, an analyst at energy consultants Wood Mackenzie in Edinburgh.
But Egypt’s good fortune could come at the expense of its much richer neighbor. Eni’s trove could threaten Israel’s ambitions to tap its own giant offshore gas field, called Leviathan.
Israel is already self-sufficient in natural gas by dint of a smaller offshore field — Tamar, discovered in 2009 — that serves the country via pipeline. Noble Energy, an American company that operates Tamar for the Israeli government, discovered the bigger Leviathan field in Israeli waters in 2010. Leviathan has potential reserves far exceeding Israel’s own needs.
Encouraged by the Obama administration, Noble reached preliminary deals last year to export gas to both Egypt and Jordan, a move approved by Mr. Netanyahu as a way to earn money and strengthen ties with former enemies.
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A worker on a gas drilling platform in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Israel.CreditAhikam Seri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Much of the Israeli gas for export would be converted to liquefied natural gas at two Egyptian facilities that are already in place on the Mediterranean coast. Those facilities have sat idle during Egypt’s domestic shortage. But Mr. Descalzi, whose company co-owns one of the installations, predicted that Egypt would be interested in using the terminals to export gas obtained from Israel, from the Zohr field or eventually from Cyprus, and to send the product by ship to Europe and beyond.
But negotiations to complete those deals have bogged down, in part because Israel’s antitrust commissioner has been blocking development of the Leviathan field over concerns about giving Noble too dominant a role in the country’s gas industry. Now some Israelis — including the country’s energy minister — have worried aloud that their country has hesitated too long. With Zohr, they fear, Egypt might no longer see a need for the Leviathan gas.
“If we continue to procrastinate,” Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli energy minister, told Parliament in September, “it is possible there will no longer be a need for Israeli gas in Egypt and Jordan.”
For months, Mr. Netanyahu has been working to clear the way for Noble and its partners from the Delek Group, an Israeli conglomerate, to develop Leviathan in return for concessions that would include a reduced stake in Tamar.
Israeli lawmakers approved the prime minister’s proposal by a nonbinding vote in September. But Mr. Netanyahu, who holds a one-seat majority in Parliament, has not yet succeeded in persuading the economy minister, Aryeh Deri, to push through the agreement.
Mr. Deri has said that he does not oppose the deal, but that he did not want to be the first Israeli economy minister to overrule an antitrust commissioner. To clear the way, Mr. Deri said in a television interview last weekend that he would be willing to resign.
Executives from Noble, impatient over the delays, have warned that they have the option of taking the Israeli government to international arbitration. “Noble Energy remains fully prepared, and is well positioned to take the actions necessary to protect the value of its assets,” Noble’s chairman, president and chief executive, David L. Stover, said in a statement last month.
Noble says that once the Israeli government signs off, the company could lock up agreements with customers like Jordan and Egypt, and might be able by the end of the decade to have gas flowing from Leviathan.
Analysts say there is still room for Israeli gas in Egypt’s plans. But participants in the talks on Israeli gas exports say that Egyptian officials, buoyed by the Eni discovery, might now take a tougher line.
Mr. Molla, the Egyptian minister, dismissed those concerns. “It is unlikely that the recently achieved Zohr discovery” would affect negotiations between international companies operating in Egypt and those producing gas in Israel, he wrote.
But Amit Mor, chief executive of Eco Energy, an Israeli consulting firm, said he worried that time might be passing Israel by. Unless the government moves quickly, he said, “we might lose an opportunity here.”
