TEL AVIB – Israel, Egypt and the European Union signed a tripartite gas deal in Cairo on Wednesday as Europe seeks to combine an energy strategy to replace decades-old Russian supplies. The deal, which has been in the works since March, will allow Israel to streamline and increase its gas exports through existing pipelines to Egyptian ports, where it can be compressed and liquefied and then transported to Europe. “This will contribute to our energy security. “And we are building infrastructure suitable for renewable energy – the energy of the future,” Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, wrote on Twitter from Cairo on Wednesday with a photo of the signing. Israel has promised in recent weeks to accelerate gas production as demand rises and prices soar. It seeks, in cooperation with other Middle Eastern countries, to sell to Europe, in the past the largest customer of Russian energy. Israel, once energy dependent, is a new major gas producer “With the outbreak of this war and Russia’s attempt to blackmail us through energy, deliberately cutting off energy supplies, we have decided to stop and get rid of our dependence on Russian fossil fuels and move away from Russia and differentiate into credible ones.” , von der Leyen said in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in Jerusalem on Tuesday night, at the end of a two-day visit to Israel and the West Bank. “It is an excellent step that brings our energy cooperation to the next level.” Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi also met with Bennett on Tuesday to discuss energy co-operation. Claudio Descalzi, head of the Italian oil giant Eni, said last month that Italy aims to be completely independent of Russian gas by the winter of 2024-2025. On Wednesday, Eni said the state-owned Russian company Gazprom had cut gas supplies to Italy by 15%. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Italy has signed agreements with many African energy exporters, including Egypt. For Israel, the sudden energy shortage in Europe is an opportunity to engage in a global market that has become exponentially profitable in recent months. “This is a terrible moment for small Israel to become a major player,” Israeli Energy Minister Karin Elharar said on Wednesday. Experts say Israel’s supply, which is mined from three offshore gas fields in the Mediterranean, will not be close to Russia’s capacity. Israel produces about 12 billion cubic meters of gas a year, although industry analysts say at least twice that amount is in untapped reserves. In 2021, the European Union imported 155 billion cubic meters of gas from Russia, accounting for about 45 percent of EU gas imports. However, Alex Coman, an energy expert at Tel Aviv University, said Israel’s contribution was becoming increasingly important as the war in Ukraine pushed Europe towards a more “fragmented strategy” in which it would buy less energy. from several countries. “Apart from the war in Ukraine, Europe is so traumatized by Russian barbarism that it has undertaken a general restructuring of its energy system,” to avoid dependence on an energy source, “he said. In May, London-based research and production company Energean announced that it had made a new commercial gas discovery of about 8 billion cubic meters off the coast of Israel. The development project is expected to go online in September. Energean CEO Matthew Rigas said even more pipelines were needed to fully exploit the Eastern Mediterranean offshore supplies and that although “Europe needs gas today, there are no magic solutions”. Beyond infrastructure, he said, the industry is being challenged both by “beneath the surface – rocks, geology – and by issues above the surface, disagreements”, in an area that has been plagued by conflict for decades. These issues arose this month when Lebanon protested the arrival of one of Energean’s floating platforms, claiming that the gas fields were within its territorial waters. Israel has said the region is within its exclusive economic zone. Lebanon is expected to step down after a meeting in Beirut this week with US top energy security adviser Amos Hochstein, according to officials who spoke to Reuters. Wednesday’s export deal comes a day after Russia’s state-owned Gazprom said it would cut capacity on the Nord Stream pipeline – the EU’s largest gas supply connection – by 40% after repair delays, boosting already rising gas prices. by 15%. . The EU has worked with the United States and other allies to impose sanctions on Moscow, but several member states are still heavily dependent on Russian oil and gas.
