The eastern Mediterranean got another whiff this week of how politically fraught the division of natural gas spoils can be, as Israel and Cyprus agreed on a maritime border agreement, only to prompt an angry protest from Turkey.
Israel and Cyprus agreed to split the 250 kilometers (155 miles) of water that separates them about half-and-half in a signing ceremony on Friday. Three days later, Turkey called in Israel’s ambassador for a dressing down, saying the accord undermines efforts to reunify the island nation’s Turkish Cypriot north and Greek Cypriot south. Israel rejected the protest.
With Israel in a permanent state of war with Lebanon and Syria; and Turkey disputing with the world over the division of Cyprus; and Lebanon riven by factionalism, the eastern Mediterranean is a political tinderbox. But until Israel discovered huge reserves of natural gas off its coast a decade ago, the region’s waters were calm.
The United States Geological Survey earlier this year estimated that more than 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas reserves lie under the waters of the eastern Mediterranean, most of it within Israeli territory. Since then, some 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves have been tentatively added from the giant Leviathan field offshore from Israel.
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