Israel Presents Plan for Developing Natural Gas Fields

Israel’s Minister of Infrastructure and energy Yuval Steinitz presented the Israeli public with a plan for developing two large natural gas fields recently discovered off the Israeli coast. He said the biggest offshore gas project, Leviathan, will remain in the hands of a US-Israeli consortium while the industry will still be opened up to more competition. Israel’s anti-trust authority had expressed opposition to the deal, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had been searching for a deal that would allow Leviathan to be developed. A Knesset vote was postponed once Netanyahu realized he would not have a majority. The field is owned by the Israeli company Delek and Texas-based Noble Energy. The Leviathan field has an estimated reserve of 22 trillion cubic feet and will take about three and a half years to develop. To avoid anti-trust issues, Delek will sell it’s almost one-third stake in another large natural gas field called Tamar, and Noble Energy will cut its stake from 36 percent to 25 percent. Tamar, with reserves of 10 trillion cubic feet, began production in 2013 for the domestic market and is expected to be expanded for export. Steinitz said the government will set a price ceiling and the deal will not change for ten years. The gas is expected to meet many of Israel’s needs, as well as Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.