Page 5 - MEOG Week 23

MEOG Commentary MEOG
have their own forecasts of what the price is expected to be in 5 years time or later if/a er they discover gas and want to monetise it,” the source concluded.
stranded assets
Monetisation has been a key concern through- out the Eastern Med with cross-border pipelines and deals hampered by political contention.
However, a breakthrough was announced in early June, when Cypriot Energy Minister Gior- gos lakkotrypis announced that his government had agreed a revenue distribution deal with the partners in the island’s Aphrodite gas eld and the pipeline transfer of output to an Egyptian lNG facility.
He said that terms had been nalised with royal Dutch shell, Houston-based Noble
Energy, and Israel’s Delek on a deal that will see the gas lique ed at Idku near Alexandria then exported.
While the deal is a major breakthrough for Cyprus, which expects to earn Us$9.3 billion over the contract’s 18-year term, it appears to put to bed talks of unitising Israeli and Cypriot production via oating lNG and raises further questions about Edison’s ambitious EastMed pipeline.
As is o en the way in the Eastern Med, no sooner had the deal been announced than Ankara said it would ght for the rights of the island’s Turkish Cypriot minority, with President Tayyip Erdogan stoking the ames by saying that drilling and exploration ships were “transition- ing to the region” under the protection of the Turkish navy.™
Oil and gas assets in the Eastern Mediterranean
Side deal
In an interview with Bloomberg last week, the CEO of little-known Cypriot investment company Cynergy Group said the rm intends to spend US$5-10 billion to acquire under-utilised gas assets in the Eastern Med.
Announcing that his company putting the nal touches on a bid to buy and consolidate assets ‘under a single owner’, Mike Germanos said that his company’s aim was unique for the region with none of the major operators working ‘don’t work across the whole region’.
While such an ambitious plan appears unlikely to succeed, the executive told Bloomberg that Cynergy was in talks with “some of the most respected global family o ces, private equity rms and sovereign funds” about raising the cash, citing the need for a “maverick approach”.
Week 23 11•June•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m
P5