In the last month or so the Palestinian Authority, mainly under the impetus of the PLO, has used the forum of the United Nations to push for the official recognition of an independent Palestinian state. Until recently the Palestinians (�PA�) have been able to get virtual recognition from several international bodies and agencies. It has frequently pressed the General Assembly for recognition as a state. The PA announced in New York that it has prepared a resolution for the UN Security Council mandating that Israel withdraw from the West Bank and East Jerusalem before November 2016.
The recognition of a Palestinian state by the new government of Sweden in early October 2014 was a boost to the PA�s hopes that the Europeans might follow suit. The UN General Assembly had approved the de facto recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine in 2012 but the European Union and most EU countries have yet to give official recognition. There is very little likelihood that such a resolution would escape a U.S. veto in the Security Council. The fact that Abbas has promised that there would be �peace on the ground� for at least a year was undercut by his Hamas partners in the PA disagreeing in public with Abbas.
Nonetheless the PA is pushing ahead with its efforts to gain international recognition as an independent state. Legally this effort is a bit confusing. There already is a �Two State Solution� created by the UN; to be precise: resolution 181 of November 29, 1947, on the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. It is the very basis of Israel�s independence. This resolution is still in force. The problem is that the Palestinians never accepted the resolution because it would have meant accepting Israel as a legitimate state. It specified the rights and obligation of the �Jewish State� and the �Palestinian State� in the resolution, including access to Jerusalem. Instead of following the UN Resolution 181 it mustered an Arab army and attacked the new Jewish State which took the name �Israel�.
However, the recurrent fanfare of Palestinian nationalism has come and gone after the numerous military defeats of Arab armies; the expansion of Israeli territory as a result of the War of 1967; and other territorial adjustments after subsequent battles and �initifadas�. It is the timing which is now important.
Like almost everything else in the history of the Middle East the catalysing factor is the energy industry. The recent start of a major Israeli offshore oil and gas industry has mobilised the Palestinians and has linked to their cause the Russians and the Turks seeking to participate in the offshore resources claimed by the Palestinians. If Palestine is not a recognised state, with fixed borders, it cannot claim the rights of a territorial state to a recognised maritime zone. It cannot make a claim to own offshore oil and gas finds as it isn�t a recognised state. That is the root of the Palestine state question today and the impetus for a quick solution.
The search for energy self-sufficiency has eluded the state of Israel since its founding in 1948. Despite millions of dollars spent on the exploration of possible sources of oil and gas, the discoveries were minimal and uneconomic. As Golda Meir was quoted �The Prophet Moses had led the Jews to the one place in the Middle East where there was no oil.� Over 40% of its energy was supplied by a pipeline from Egypt.
Some Israeli gas was provided by the Yam Tethys � the Mari B and Noa - natural gas reservoirs discovered in 1999 and 2000 by a partnership of the U.S.-based Noble Energy and the Israeli Delek Energy. These reservoirs marked the start of a new era... Mari-B and Noa established the Israeli offshore holdings in the oil & gas game for the very first time, and introduced natural gas to the Israeli market. Yam Tethys has been supplying natural gas to the Israeli market since 2004. The major clients of Yam Tethys include the IEC (Israeli Electric Corporation); ICL (Israel Chemicals, Ltd.) and the sole Israeli Independent Power Producer.
Then, in 2009, the U.S.-based Noble Energy discovered the Tamar field in the Levantine Basin some 50 miles west of Israel�s port of Haifa with an estimated 8.3 tcf (trillion cubic feet) of highest quality natural gas. Tamar was the world�s largest gas discovery in 2009. At the time, the Yam Tehys gas reserves were estimated at only 1.5 tcf. Moreover estimates were that Yam Tethys, which supplied about 70 per cent of the country�s natural gas, would be depleted within three years.
With Tamar, prospects began to look considerably better. Then, just a year after Tamar, the same consortium led by Noble Energy struck the largest gas find in its decades-long history at Leviathan in the same Levantine geological basin. Present estimates are that the Leviathan field holds at least 17 tcf of gas. Israel went from a gas famine to feast in a matter of months. There were also large discoveries of oil in the same basin.
The USGS, (US Geological Survey), stated that undiscovered oil and gas resources of the Levant Basin Province amount to 1.68 billion barrels of oil, and 122 tcf of gas. Just months earlier, securing foreign gas was a national security priority of Israel as its existing domestic gas supplies dwindled dangerously low. Further adding to the energy crisis were the so-called Arab Spring protests sweeping across Egypt into Libya in early 2011.The revolts toppled Mubarak, under whose regime Egypt had supplied some 40% of Israeli natural gas. With Mubarak toppled and the ban lifted on Egypt�s Islamic parties, especially the Muslim Brotherhood and the radical Salafist Al-Nour Party, the gas pipeline delivering Egypt�s gas to Israel was target of repeated sabotage and disruptions.
Now, with the arrival of the first Tamar gas at Ashdod and the expected mega-flows of gas from the Leviathan fields before 2016 Israel is becoming a serious �player� in the international oil and gas industry. Israel is now producing far more gas from its offshore fields than it could ever possibly use for its domestic economy so it is preparing to export this gas via pipeline and, perhaps, as LNG.
The Leviathan Basin
The Tamar Field
There have been claims by both Lebanon and Syria that their maritime zones include part of the Tamar and Leviathan fields but they are in no position to enforce their claims. Although Lebanon believes it has a claim to the Leviathan field, Lebanon and Israel are technically at war and do not recognise either land or sea borders. Israel has declared its maritime boundaries with Lebanon. Based on its boundaries on land, Israel established a maritime zone that veers well to the north, an area that encompasses all the known major gas fields. Lebanon has responded by submitting to the UN the coordinates of what it says are its maritime boundaries and has also lodged a formal protest with the world body against Israel which is being studied by the Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, and other UN bodies. However, Israel, like the USA, has never ratified the 1982 UN Convention on Law of the Sea dividing world subsea mineral rights. The Israeli gas wells at Leviathan are clearly within undisputed Israeli territory as Lebanon affirms, but Lebanon believes the field extends over into their subsea waters as well. The Lebanese Hezbollah claims that the Tamar gas field, which has just begun gas deliveries, belongs to Lebanon. These claims and counterclaims on Leviathan remain to be settled. Syria is busy with other concerns at the moment.
However, the Noa North Field and the Mari B field are located offshore Ashkelon, only 13 kilometres from the Gaza border. In June 2012 Noble Energy informed its Israeli partner, the Dalek Group, that it was ready to start delivering gas to |Israel. The gas pipelines have been full from both Noa and Mari B since; added to by the flows from Tamar and the Leviathan. It is this area of gas which has attracted the attention of the Palestinians in particular. They feel that if they can be recognised as a state, including Gaza in that state, the new Palestinian State would have the right to make claim on its territorial waters, including Noa and Mari-B.
Israel produces far more gas than it can possibly consume and has made delivery deals with Egypt, Jordan and others. Noble Energy also discovered huge volumes of gas off the waters of the Republic of Cyprus. In December 2011 Noble announced a successful deep water gas find offshore Cyprus in a field estimated to hold at least 7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This made Cyprus, overnight, a potential major player in the gas to Europe business. Cyprus and Israel agreed to co-operate on building a pipeline from Israel�s offshore facilities to Cyprus and continuing to Europe through joining up with the new offshore Greek gas fields; �the East Mediterranean Gas Pipeline. This would entail the laying of an underwater pipeline connecting Cyprus with Crete and then with the Greek mainland which could transport 8 bcm/y of Cypriot and Israeli gas to Europe. In October 2013 the European Commission designated the planned pipeline a project of common interest which could be eligible for financial support. A link could be made with the envisaged IGI-Poseidon pipeline to enable gas to be delivered to Italy via the Ionian Sea. This did not include Turkey.
The Turks were initially interested in receiving Israeli gas but felt disadvantaged by the Israel-Cyprus co-operation agreement. Turkish politics preclude any such an arrangement which involves Greek Cyprus. Turkey is using its presence in Turkish Cyprus to make a claim on the Cyprus offshore gas facilities but has been very unsuccessful as Greek Cyprus is part of the EU. Turkish hostility to Israel under the AKP government also precludes a long-term contract with Israel, even though the Turks are now dependent for over 30% of its gas supplies from Russia. The Turks have boxed themselves into a corner as Israel and Cyprus are likely to lay a pipeline to Greece which will link both Cypriot and Israeli gas to the European Union customers, providing an alternative to the grip of Gazprom and the Russians.
The Turks and the Israelis had agreed to examine building a pipeline from the Leviathan Field to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. However, in late September 2014, the Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz announced that no energy projects with Israel would be pursued until there was permanent peace in the region. That does not seem imminent so the Turkish pipeline scheme is dead
In January 2014 a deal was concluded with the Palestine Power Generation Company (PPGC) to export annually 4.75 bcm of gas from Leviathan over a twenty year period to a future power in Jenin in the West Bank. In September 2014 a letter of intent was signed with Jordan�s National Electric Power Company (NEPCO) for the sale of 45 bcm of gas from Leviathan over a fifteen year period. Ironically, perhaps, the Palestinians, Jordanians and Egyptians appear more willing to receive gas from the Leviathan field in spite of the tensions between Israel and Hamas over Gaza.
In January 2014 Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Russian President Vladimir Putin where, under Russian promises of investment a political support, the parties signed an investment agreement aiming to develop the Gaza offshore gas field in the Mediterranean Sea. �There were talks of investing $1 billion to develop a Palestinian gas field. There were two potential fields explored offshore of Gaza in the Mediterranean in 1998 called Gaza Marine 1 and 2. In 1999, the Palestinian Authority granted the British Gas Group the exclusive rights to explore for gas. In 2000, the company announced that it discovered gas and was seeking to develop the field in partnership with Consolidated Contractors Company and the Palestinian Authority. However, the eruption of the second Palestinian intifada put an end to this.
Although the possibility of allowing British Gas, and its envoy Tony Blair, to resume the study of the project by Netanyahu, the two wars in Gaza have put an end, or at least a delay to these plans. The fact that the Palestinians do not have title to these Gaza offshore fields has been a major hurdle for all its plans. This need to exploit its notional gas reserves was the catalyst for the Palestinian rush to demand legal recognition for an independent Palestinian state. There is much more involved in this rush towards recognition than the appeals to justice, proportionality and oppression. It is the Middle East. It is about oil and gas and the international competition for the control of these resources.
