Page 4 - EurOil Week 35 2022

EurOil COMMENTARY EurOil

For Cypriot gas, the path to Europe

may run through Egypt

Establishing short subsea links with Egypt may be a faster and cheaper way to launch exports
than waiting for EastMed, which would be the world’s longest underwater pipeline

CYPRUS CYPRUS has known for more than a decade construction of a subsea pipeline connecting
that it possesses substantial offshore natural gas Israel’s offshore zone to Greece via Cypriot ter-
WHAT: reserves. Between 2011 and 2019, international ritorial waters.
Cyprus, an EU member oil companies (IOCs) succeeded in finding three The pipe was primarily designed to carry
state, has discovered sizeable fields – Aphrodite, Glaucus and Calypso gas from Israel’s offshore Leviathan field to the
more gas at a time when – that contain at least 15-20 trillion cubic feet Greek market – whence it could be piped to Italy
the EU needs gas. (425bn cubic metres) of gas. And just this sum- (via a proposed new underwater link) and/or
mer, Eni (Italy) and TotalEnergies (France) the Balkans (via existing interconnectors), all of
WHY: have announced the discovery of another field, which have traditionally been reliant on Russian
An existing pipeline Cronos, that appears to hold another 2.5 trillion gas – at a rate of about 10 bcm per year. But it
transportation schemes cubic feet (70.8 bcm) of gas. could also carry Cypriot gas, since it was to pass
has some serious The find ought to be good news for the EU. through Cypriot waters.
drawbacks, including These gas reserves are located in the coastal Indeed, now that the Cronos find has been
long timelines and high waters of an EU member state, and they have announced, there seems to be more reason than
budgets. come to light at a time when the EU is facing ever to think about loading Cypriot gas into such
difficult questions about how exactly it will meet a pipeline. Altogether, Cyprus’ offshore zone
WHAT NEXT: energy demand during the upcoming heating appears to hold at least 17.5 trillion cubic feet
Panel no indent season. These questions are not easy to answer, (495.8 bcm) of gas, making its reserves compa-
Panel indent given that gas prices are very high and that Rus- rable to those of Leviathan, which holds about
sia will be delivering significantly less fuel than 18.9 trillion cubic feet (535 bcm).
usual due to events in Ukraine. But there are problems with EastMed.
Under these circumstances, some observ-
ers have suggested that the Cronos discovery EastMed’s old obstacles
could help rebuild support within the EU for The pipeline project has garnered a considera-
the EastMed project, which envisioned the ble amount of attention over the years and has

P4 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 35 02•September•2022