Source: Boiling Frogs Post
F. William Engdahl
Recent
discoveries of not just significant, but huge oil and gas reserves in
the little-explored Mediterranean Sea between Greece, Turkey, Cyprus,
Israel, Syria and Lebanon suggest that the region could become literally
a “new Persian Gulf” in terms of oil and gas riches. As with the old
Persian Gulf, discovery of hydrocarbon riches could as well spell a
geopolitical curse of staggering dimension.
An Israeli Leviathan
The
game-changer was a dramatic discovery in late 2010 of an enormous
natural gas field offshore of Israel in what geologists call the Levant
or Levantine Basin. In October 2010 Israel discovered a massive
“super-giant” gas field offshore in what it declares is its Exclusive
Economic Zone (EEZ). The find is some 84 miles west of the Haifa port
and three miles deep. They named it Leviathan after the Biblical sea
monster. Three Israeli energy companies in cooperation with the Houston
Texas Noble Energy announced initial estimates that the field contained
16 trillion cubic feet of gas—making it the world’s biggest deep-water
gas find in a decade, adding more discredit to “peak oil” theories that
the planet is about to see dramatic and permanent shortages of oil, gas
and coal. To put the number in perspective, that one gas field,
Leviathan, would hold enough reserves to supply Israel’s gas needs for
100 years.[1]
With
Tamar, prospects began to look considerably better. Then, just a year
after Tamar, the same consortium led by Noble Energy struck the largest
gas find in its decades-long history at Leviathan in the same Levantine
geological basin. Present estimates are that the Leviathan field holds
at least 17 tcf of gas.[2] Israel went from a gas famine to feast in a matter of months.
Discovery
of Leviathan by Israel in the waters offshore immediately triggered a
new geopolitical conflict as Lebanon claimed that part of the gas field
lay in Lebanese territorial waters in Lebanon’s Exclusive Economic Zone
(EEZ). Lebanon delivered maps to the UN to back its claim, to which
Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman retorted, “We won’t give an inch.”
# # # #
F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics in the New World Order. He may be contacted through his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net where this article was originally published.
Endnotes:
F. William Engdahl
Part I: Israel’s Levant Basin—a new geopolitical curse?
Recent
discoveries of not just significant, but huge oil and gas reserves in
the little-explored Mediterranean Sea between Greece, Turkey, Cyprus,
Israel, Syria and Lebanon suggest that the region could become literally
a “new Persian Gulf” in terms of oil and gas riches. As with the old
Persian Gulf, discovery of hydrocarbon riches could as well spell a
geopolitical curse of staggering dimension.
Long-standing Middle East conflicts could soon be paled by new
battles over rights to oil and gas resources beneath the eastern
Mediterranean in the Levant Basin and Aegean Sea. Here we explore the
implications of a gigantic discovery of gas and oil in offshore Israel.
In a second article we will explore the implications of gas and oil
discoveries in the Aegean between Cyprus, Syria, Turkey, Greece and
Lebanon.
An Israeli Leviathan
The
game-changer was a dramatic discovery in late 2010 of an enormous
natural gas field offshore of Israel in what geologists call the Levant
or Levantine Basin. In October 2010 Israel discovered a massive
“super-giant” gas field offshore in what it declares is its Exclusive
Economic Zone (EEZ). The find is some 84 miles west of the Haifa port
and three miles deep. They named it Leviathan after the Biblical sea
monster. Three Israeli energy companies in cooperation with the Houston
Texas Noble Energy announced initial estimates that the field contained
16 trillion cubic feet of gas—making it the world’s biggest deep-water
gas find in a decade, adding more discredit to “peak oil” theories that
the planet is about to see dramatic and permanent shortages of oil, gas
and coal. To put the number in perspective, that one gas field,
Leviathan, would hold enough reserves to supply Israel’s gas needs for
100 years.[1]
Energy self-sufficiency had eluded the state of Israel since its
founding in 1948. Abundant oil and gas exploration had repeatedly been
undertaken with meager result. Unlike its energy-rich Arab neighbors,
Israel seemed out of luck. Then in 2009 Israel’s exploration partner,
Noble Energy, discovered the Tamar field in the Levantine Basin some 50
miles west of Israel’s port of Haifa with an estimated 8.3 tcf (trillion
cubic feet) of highest quality natural gas. Tamar was the world’s
largest gas discovery in 2009.
At the time, total Israeli gas reserves were estimated at only 1.5
tcf. Government estimates were that Israel’s sole operating field, Yam
Tethys, which supplies about 70 percent of the country’s natural gas,
would be depleted within three years.
With
Tamar, prospects began to look considerably better. Then, just a year
after Tamar, the same consortium led by Noble Energy struck the largest
gas find in its decades-long history at Leviathan in the same Levantine
geological basin. Present estimates are that the Leviathan field holds
at least 17 tcf of gas.[2] Israel went from a gas famine to feast in a matter of months.
With the Tamar and now Leviathan discoveries, Israel was beginning to
discuss how to become a major natural gas export nation as well as
whether to significantly tax s and oil revenues and place it into an
Israeli Sovereign Wealth Fund that would make long-term investments in
the Israeli economy as China and many Arab OPEC nations do.[3]
“The Levant Basin Province is comparable to some of the other large
provinces around the world,” noted a spokesperson from the US Geological
Survey’s (USGS) Energy Resources Program. “Its gas resources are bigger
than anything we have assessed in the United States.” [4]
Perhaps sensing that major oil and gas discoveries were being
confirmed with potential to change the geopolitics of the entire region,
the USGS launched its first-ever estimate of the total reserves of oil
and gas in the broad region encompassing the Eastern Mediterranean
including the Aegean Basin offshore Greece and Turkey and Cyprus, the
Levant Basin offshore Lebanon, Israel and Syria, and the Nile Basin
offshore Egypt. Their conclusion was impressive to put it mildly.
The USGS, using all data from previous drilling and geologic surveys
of the region concluded, “undiscovered oil and gas resources of the
Levant Basin Province amount to 1.68 billion barrels of oil, and 122 tcf
of gas. Additionally, according to USGS estimates, “undiscovered oil
and gas resources of the Nile Delta Basin Province (bounded by the Nile
Cone to the west, by Strabo to the north, by the Pytheus and Cyprus
Trenches to the east and by the Levant Basin to the south) are estimated
to be approximately 1.76 bbl (of oil), and 223 tcf of natural gas.” [5]
The USGS calculated the total for the eastern Mediterranean as a
whole currently at 345 tcf of gas and 3.4 billion barrels of oil.
Suddenly the entire region is facing completely new geopolitical
challenges and conflict potentials.
To put the numbers into perspective, the USGS estimates that Russia’s
West Siberian Basin, the world’s largest known gas basin, holds 643 tcf
of gas. As well, the Middle East and North Africa regions have several
natural gas-rich areas, including the Rub Al Khali Basin (426 trillion
cubic feet) in southwestern Saudi Arabia and Northern Yemen; the Greater
Ghawar Uplift in eastern Saudi Arabia (227 tcf) and the Zagros Fold
Belt (212 tcf) along the Persian Gulf and into Iraq and Iran.[6]
Just months earlier, securing foreign gas was a national security
priority of Israel as existing domestic gas supplies dwindled
dangerously low. Further adding to the energy crisis were the so-called
Arab Spring protests sweeping across Egypt into Libya in early 2011. The
revolts toppled Mubarak, under whose regime Egypt had supplied some 40%
of Israeli natural gas. With Mubarak toppled and the ban lifted on
Egypt’s Islamic parties, especially the Muslim Brotherhood and the
radical Salafist Al-Nour Party, the gas pipeline delivering Egypt’s gas
to Israel was target of repeated sabotage and disruptions, the most
recent February of this year in northern Sinai. Israel was becoming more
than nervous about its future energy security.[7]
Lebanon reaction fuels new frictions
Discovery
of Leviathan by Israel in the waters offshore immediately triggered a
new geopolitical conflict as Lebanon claimed that part of the gas field
lay in Lebanese territorial waters in Lebanon’s Exclusive Economic Zone
(EEZ). Lebanon delivered maps to the UN to back its claim, to which
Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman retorted, “We won’t give an inch.”
The fly in the Mediterranean energy soup is the fact that Israel,
like the USA, has never ratified the 1982 UN Convention on Law of the
Sea dividing world subsea mineral rights. The Israeli gas wells at
Leviathan are clearly within undisputed Israeli territory as Lebanon
affirms, but Lebanon believes the field extends over into their subsea
waters as well. The Lebanese Hezbollah claims that the Tamar gas field,
which is due to begin gas deliveries by the end of this year, belongs to
Lebanon.
Washington has lost no time adding political gasoline to the natural
gas dispute between Lebanon and Israel. In July of 2011 as Israel
prepared to submit its own proposal to the UN as to where the offshore
demarcation line between Lebanon and Israel should run, Frederick Hof,
US diplomat responsible for special affairs regarding Syria and Lebanon,
told Lebanon that the Obama Administration endorsed the Lebanese
document, adding to the growing tensions reported since outbreak of the
Arab Spring between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Obama.[8]
Netanyahu has reportedly recently urged America’s eighth wealthiest
person, his close friend Las Vegas casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson to
pour millions directly into the campaigns of Republicans, including
Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. It represents an unprecedented direct
Israeli intervention into US presidential candidates’ campaigns, in
order to try to defeat a second Obama term.[9]
New issues of control of the vast energy reserves being discovered off
Israeli and Lebanese, Cypriot, Turkish and Greek shores will clearly
play a growing role in one of the most entangled political regions on
Earth.
In our next piece the added complication of oil and gas discoveries in the Aegean Sea will be examined.
Endnotes:
[1] Charles Levinson, Guy Chazan, Big Gas Find Sparks a Frenzy in Israel, The Wall Street Journal, December 30, 2010, accessed in http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204204004576049842786766586.html#printMode.
[2] Offshore Energy Today Staff, Israel: Leviathan Holds More Gas Than Previously Estimated, Offshore Energy Today, December 19, 2011, accessed in http://www.offshoreenergytoday.com/israel-leviathan-holds-more-gas-than-previously-estimated/.
[3] AFP, Israel has enough gas ‘to become exporter,’ 29 December 2010, accessed in http://www.france24.com/en/20101229-israel-has-enough-gas-become-exporter.
[4] US Department of the Interior, Levant basin holds 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2010–3014, March 2010-April 10, 2010.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Avi Bar-Eli and Itai Trilnick, Forecast
Blackout Israel is about to run out of natural gas: Shortage expected
to last at least until next year, when the Tamar gas field starts
production, February 2, 2012, Haaretz, accessed in http://english.themarker.com/forecast-blackout-israel-is-about-to-run-out-of-natural-gas-1.410513. See also Reuters, Blast Hits Gas Pipeline Between Egypt, Jordan, Israel, 4 February 2012.
[8] Barak Ravid, US Backs Lebanon on Maritime Border Dispute with Israel, July 10, 2011, Haaretz.com
[9] Reuters, Sheldon Adelson Probe: Donations From Casino Owner Could Embarrass Republican Candidates, February 8, 2012, accessed in http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/08/sheldon-adelson-donations-casino-probe_n_1263945.html?ref=email_share. For more on the Adelson-Gingrich-Romney-Netanyahu connection see, Max Blumenthal, The Bibi Connection, January 12, 2012, accessed in http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/bibi-connection.
