http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/a-geopolitical-game-changer-1.295522
A gigantic deposit of natural gas called Leviathan, 6.5 times the size of Tel Aviv, was found,
roughly 100 nautical miles from where the flotilla fiasco took place and well
within Israel's extended territorial waters.
This discovery may provide Israel with security in terms of its supply
of electricity, turn it into an important natural gas exporter and
provide a shot in the arm of some $300 billion over the life of the
field - one-and-a-half times the national GDP - to the Israeli economy,
already one of the most resilient in the world.
More importantly, this discovery is nothing short of a geopolitical game
changer. To understand its magnitude, consider this: The world's biggest
gas discovery in 2009, 238 billion cubic meters, was made by a
U.S.-Israel consortium at a site called Tamar, 60 miles off the coast of
Haifa. The nearby Leviathan field is estimated to be twice that size.
Altogether the basin in the eastern Mediterranean to which those fields
belong could contain an amount of gas equivalent to one-fifth of U.S.
natural gas reserves. For a small country like Israel, such a bonanza
could not have come at a better time.
Until recently, Israel was facing an energy predicament. Its
fast-growing population - and the even faster-growing Palestinian Arab
population to which it also supplies electricity - and the declining
reserves of Egypt, its main gas supplier, required the identification of
new sources of gas for electricity production. One alternative was to
import natural gas from Russia and the Caspian Sea via Turkey. To this
end, Turkey and Israel negotiated the construction of a subsea pipeline.
But with the deterioration of their relations, this option gradually
became unfeasible. Another option was to import gas from Qatar, hardly a
reliable supplier. Yet a third, more costly, possibility was
construction of a liquefied natural gas terminal, which would enable
imports from various suppliers.
The discoveries at Tamar and Leviathan solved the problem: Israel will
no longer have to import natural gas. Its dilemma now, rather, is
deciding where to export the excess and how to reap the most
geopolitical gains from its new status as an energy exporter. [..]
Jan Rasmussen