Are These Gas Fields Israel’s Next Warzone?

Are These Gas Fields Israel’s Next Warzone? HT: Daily Beast

Rumors of war could become the reality as Israel vies with the other nations of the Levant for control of the huge riches beneath the sea.

When Israel looks at the greatest threat to its long-term hopes for the future, these days it’s looking out to sea. The old issues are on the table, of course: Iran’s nukes, the Palestinians, the Syrian slaughterhouse next door and growing regional instability.

But if there’s a place where a sudden, out-of-control war is likely to erupt, it’s probably not going to be called the Sinai, the Golan, the West Bank (or Judea and Samaria). It’s going to be called Leviathan, Dalit or Karish—the vast fields of natural gas and oil discovered in the deep waters between Israel and Cyprus over the last five years.

Who controls that wealth is likely to dominate the economic future of the region for generations to come. The Israelis know it. So do their allies, their rivals and their enemies. And tensions are mounting by the day.

 “All the elements of danger are there,” says Pierre Terzian, editor of the oil industry weekly Petrostrategies: there is competition for huge resources, there are disputed borders, and, not to put too fine a point on it, “this is a region where resorting to violent action is not something unusual.”

The United States government is watching warily, trying to broker diplomatic settlements and, so far, failing. No longer inclined to be the region’s policeman on land or in the air, much less at sea, Washington is scaling back its presence in the Middle East while just about everyone else is increasing theirs.

The biggest threat to these projects will could be Turkey. Under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, its relations with Israel have gone from warm to cold, and just recently have begun once again to thaw.

Turkey—and the northern half of Cyprus, occupied by its troops since 1974—have been largely left out of the Levant Basin boom. Ankara has been accused of saber rattling to intimidate would-be investors in the Aphrodite field that belongs to the internationally recognized government of Cyprus on the southern half of the island. But Turkey would also like to be the conduit for a pipeline taking Levant Basin gas to Europe, and that won’t happen unless Cyprus and Israel want it to. So that has tempered Erdogan’s truculence a bit. Hmmm....remember those frigates Turkey wanted from the US?They surely would come in handy for those gas fields.Read the full story here.

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Oil Wars: Mediterranean Maritime Conflict: Israel and Lebanon dispute over undersea oil and gas.

Oil Wars: Mediterranean Maritime Conflict: Israel and Lebanon dispute over undersea oil and gas.(WP).Cyprus has offered to mediate between Lebanon and Israel over a maritime border dispute that is delaying some oil and gas exploration in the Mediterranean, a Cypriot official said Monday. Both Lebanon and Israel claim a small maritime area of 850 square kilometers. The dispute has held up ratification of the 2007 Lebanese-Cypriot agreement, defining Exclusive Economic Zones among the three countries. It has also led to bitter exchanges and threats between Israel and Lebanon. ... Kassinis said it would it be unfortunate if the negotiations ended abruptly between Lebanon and Israel. Instead, he said, Lebanon should take whatever Israel is offering as a first step, and then continue negotiating. Kassinis said the agreement which Cyprus and Lebanon signed 2007 “should be concluded and should be sent to the parliament to be ratified as we did in Cyprus.” Lebanon says that a bilateral agreement signed in 2010 between Cyprus and Israel and ratified a year later conflicts with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Lebanon demands that it be amended in accordance with international laws that govern the demarcation of maritime borders among states. Israel insists that its undersea oil development projects are all in its territorial waters.Read the full story here.