NICOSIA, Cyprus, 15 May: Cyprus and Israel are working on a deal to build a pipeline that will convey natural gas from both countries to the east Mediterranean island nation, where it will be liquefied for export by ship to Europe and potentially elsewhere, the Cypriot energy minister said Monday.
\nMinister Giorgos Papanastasiou said Monday he would soon visit Israel to hammer out a formal agreement. Once the deal is signed, the pipeline could be completed in 18 months.
\nIt will take 2 \u00bd years to build a liquefaction plant on Cyprus once investors are secured.
\nSo far, five sizeable gas deposits have been discovered off Cyprus\u2019 southern coastline. Israel has 11 such fields: the biggest, named Leviathan, contains an estimated 22 trillion cubic feet (623 billion cubic meters) of gas.
\nPapanastasiou said he would meet later this month with energy companies licensed to explore for oil and gas inside Cyprus\u2019 exclusive economic zone – include French Total, Italy\u2019s Eni, ExxonMobil and Chevron – to scope out ways of collaborating on projects that would expedite getting their gas discoveries to market.
\nThe minister said Israel agreed to the proposal pitched by the Cypriot government for the pipeline and liquefaction plant, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disclosed on Sunday.
\n\u201cThe eastern Mediterranean has enough (gas) deposits. Most are inside Israel\u2019s exclusive economic zone, but Cyprus has sufficient quantities as well for this project to materialize,\u201d Papanastasiou told reporters.
\nThe minister explained that this project was a truncated version of the EastMed pipeline idea. That proposal \u2013 for a 1,900-kilometer (1,300-mile), $6 billion pipeline designed to convey regional gas directly to Europe – has in recent years fallen out of favor.
\nInstead of a direct pipeline connection to Europe, processed gas from Cyprus could reach international markets by ship.
\n\u201cWhen you have liquefied natural gas, it can go in any direction \u2026 Europe now needs it more, but markets can also be found in Asia,\u201d said Papanastasiou.
\nIn December, the previous Cypriot government said it was weighing a proposal for a similar plan as Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine compounded an energy crisis, the AP reported.
\nPapanastasiou said Cypriot and Israeli authorities would need a few more months to negotiate a separate agreement on how much gas from the Cypriot Aphrodite gas field fell within neighboring Israeli waters.
\nA proposal for a pipeline to convey Cypriot and Egyptian gas to liquefaction plans in Egypt for export remains separate from the Israeli-Cypriot plan, the minister said. AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NICOSIA, Cyprus, 15 May: Cyprus and Israel are working on a deal to build a pipeline that will convey natural gas from both countries to the east Mediterranean island nation, where it will be liquefied for export by ship to Europe and potentially elsewhere, the Cypriot energy minister said Monday. Minister Giorgos Papanastasiou said Monday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-216280","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}