The year 1999 marked the beginning of the practical interest of Israeli companies in gas fields in Palestinian territorial waters, as they launched work in exploration and investment, which later led to the transformation of Israel from a gas importer to an exporter.
Oil and gas discoveries in the waters of the Eastern Mediterranean have added a new element to the conflict with Israel, and Israel’s expansionist ambitions have hampered the path of oil and gas in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin and its revenues.
The Israeli energy authorities were able to secure self-sufficiency for the local market, and operate 70% of the electricity with extracted gas. The occupation government began launching projects to connect and export gas with neighboring Arab countries, and set its sights on reaching the European market, and other investment projects with a geopolitical dimension.
All this coincided with the discovery of a natural gas reserve in Palestinian territorial waters near the shores of Gaza, distributed over two fields, the largest of which is called Gaza Marine, and the other is the northern marine border field of the Gaza Strip.
Against the backdrop of digital energy data, and the emergence of economic and geopolitical feasibility, Israel has completed the extension of a giant infrastructure network across the land and all territorial waters along the coast of historic Palestine.
Energy map
The Israeli energy map includes the gas fields in Levitan and Tamar and the production platforms off the shores of Ashkelon and Haifa in the Mediterranean, as well as gas pumping and distribution stations for the purpose of liquefaction to the Egyptian Gas Company “Medco” in Sinai, and gas treatment and pressure reduction stations that are concerned with pumping through a network of lines to the local market.
The Israeli energy authorities are also discussing with the American company Chevron to establish floating liquefaction stations on the Palestinian coast opposite major cities.
British Gas, which discovered two fields on the shores of Gaza, estimated the reserve amount at about 1.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and the total market value of gas in the two fields ranges between 6 billion and 8 billion dollars, according to estimates.
Oil and natural gas discoveries in the Levant Basin in the eastern Mediterranean are estimated at 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas with a net value of $453 billion (2017 prices), and 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil with a net value of about $71 billion.
In 2021, the US Geological Survey estimated the expected gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean at about 286.2 trillion cubic feet of gas.
The total production of the Levitan gas field is estimated at about 12 billion cubic meters annually, and this will gradually increase to about 21 billion cubic meters annually.
The Tamar field’s reserves are estimated at about 280 billion cubic meters. Production began in 2013, and the Tamar gas platform produces between 7.1 and 8.5 million cubic meters of natural gas per day.
The competent Israeli authorities are withholding the benefit gained from seizing Palestinian gas, as well as the consequences of investment projects and lines of cooperation with neighboring countries.
Colonial project
Israel seeks to exploit Palestinian resources and achieve its colonial and economic goals by exporting “stolen gas” and concluding deals with neighboring countries with the participation of the European Union.
UN reports indicate that the occupation has prevented the Palestinians from benefiting from their natural resources, estimated to be worth billions of dollars, and through its current destructive war, it seeks to displace the people of the Gaza Strip.
The occupation government practices a dual policy in dealing with Palestinian energy sources. On the one hand, it prevents the Authority from accessing energy wells, whether those on the West Bank’s border with the Jordan River or those in the territorial waters off the Gaza coast. The West Bank is under direct occupation and the residents of Gaza were not allowed to access. More than 7 kilometers out to sea.
According to a 2019 report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), geologists and natural resource economists confirmed that the occupied Palestinian territories lie above large oil and gas reservoirs, in Area C of the occupied West Bank and the Mediterranean coast off the Gaza Strip.
However, the occupation continues to prevent Palestinians from developing their energy fields to exploit and benefit from them, and as such, the Palestinian people have been deprived of the benefits of using this natural resource to finance social and economic development and meet their energy needs.
The accumulated losses are estimated in the billions of dollars, and the longer Israel prevents the Palestinians from exploiting their oil and natural gas reserves, the greater the opportunity costs and the greater the overall costs of the occupation borne by the Palestinians.
At the same time, the occupation government ignored the Authority’s agreement with the “Shell” company for prospecting and exploration in the marine area off the coast of Gaza, and for two decades obstructed any opportunities to develop the Gaza “Marine” field through well drilling and gas production operations, which led to the exit of the “Shell” company. From the field.
The occupation also imposed restrictions or a ban on the transfer of Palestinian gas through the territories occupied in 1948 or the areas located within the settlement lands, and it also places restrictions on the financial returns that are supposed to be the share of the Palestinian side.
Energy and the War on Gaza
The Israeli occupation controls Gaza’s energy and water resources, hindering efforts to establish an independent energy infrastructure in the Strip. The occupation benefits from “stolen gas” and water, while Palestinians in Gaza suffer from a severe energy crisis.
In linking the energy resources off the coast of Gaza and the Israeli war on the Strip, the American website “Mondoweiss” published an article by writer Tara Alami in which she said that the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip cannot be viewed in isolation from the rich resources represented by the natural gas that abound on its shores.
She added that the Israeli attack deliberately destroyed buildings and infrastructure and killed and wounded tens of thousands of Palestinians, only to force the population to emigrate so that Gaza would be free for the occupation, to complete the project that aims to build an ethnic colonial state.
Under the title “Erasing Gaza from the map…the big-money agenda and the confiscation of Palestine’s marine reserves of natural gas,” the Globalization Research Center, based in the Canadian city of Montreal, published an extensive file that included several reports, articles, and meetings with experts talking about what it described as the “hidden goals” of the ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza.
The file talked about the displacement of Palestinians from their homeland, in order to be able to confiscate the marine natural gas reserves in Gaza.
Reports in the file point out that the devastating war on the Gaza Strip came 10 years after a report by British journalist Felicity Arbuthnot in which she said that Israel seeks to be a major exporter of natural gas and some oil.
Arbuthnot had stressed in her analysis that governments and media considered that the giant natural gas field of Leviathan, in the eastern Mediterranean, which was discovered in 2010, was located “off the coast of Israel,” in implicit recognition that it belongs to the occupation, even though part of it is located in Gaza Strip water.
But on the other hand, it must be emphasized that Israel’s declared objectives in its war on Gaza did not touch, in any way, on the gas issue, but rather were limited to achieving security and military objectives against the Palestinian resistance and its popular incubator in the Gaza Strip. This does not deny the existence of Israel’s ambitions related to In this file, but it was not on the agenda of decision-makers in Israel, which was subjected to a sudden attack that caused it to lose its balance by the Palestinian resistance, led by the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).
Security requirements
The occupation authorities claim that the gas reserves off the Gaza Strip are “a treasure of their own,” and Canadian economist Michel Chossodowski, founder and president of the Center for Globalization Research, said last October that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration of war on the Gaza Strip is a continuation of the invasion of Gaza, which It began in 2008 under “Operation Cast Lead.”
Chossudovsky adds that the main goal of the operation is the explicit military occupation of Gaza and the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland, and the confiscation of Gaza’s offshore natural gas reserves, specifically those discovered by British Gas in 1999 off the coast of the Strip, as well as the discoveries of the Levant Basin in 2013.
About two years ago, Al-Monitor newspaper revealed the existence of secret talks between Israel and regional countries about exploring for natural gas off the coast of the Gaza Strip.
The newspaper reported that Israel postponed gas exploration operations off the coast of Gaza for security reasons, and that it stipulated “implementing practical measures that guarantee its security” before starting gas extraction operations from the Gaza fields, which were scheduled for the beginning of 2024.
Green normalization
Knowing that the virtual time of energy, with environmental and economic feasibility and the emergence of alternative energy projects, will end in a time frame not exceeding 30 years starting in 2021, Israel has begun working on the green normalization project (alternative energy) with the Arab neighborhood at an accelerated pace since the beginning of this century.
This factor stands behind the green normalization project, which gives Israel a longer time horizon for investments and influence in the region after the end of the use of natural gas energy by 2050.
In the book “The Challenge of Green Capitalism: Climate Justice and the Energy Transition in the Arab Region” by Algerian Hamza Hamouchane and British Katie Sandwell, the authors refer to Israel’s normalization agreements with neighboring Arab countries, and confirm that Israel focuses in large part on energy and gas and preserving its wealth in this context.
For example, a chapter from the book quoted by Palestinian writer Manal Shuqair in an article indicates that Jordan will sell Israel all the electricity generated by the solar farm that will be built on its land for $180 million annually.
The rationale, he says, is that Israel will not need to use its energy to operate the desalination plant that will supply Jordan with 200 million cubic meters of water annually.
This is part of the Israeli goal of strengthening the energy and water desalination sectors together.
Desalination, which Israel seeks to rely on as a primary source of water by 2030, is energy-intensive, accounting for 3.4% of its total energy consumption. The occupation government is therefore seeking to increase its access to alternative energy sources, and “green normalization” will provide one of these sources.
Jordan is deprived of its energy
The deal does not allow Jordan – whose natural gas imports constitute 75% of its energy sources – to obtain energy from the project and benefit from its energy sector – but rather it will continue to import gas from Israel, according to the notorious gas agreement between the two sides.
According to the $10 billion deal, Levitan, a natural gas field in the Mediterranean controlled by Israel, will supply Jordan with 60 billion cubic meters of gas over 15 years.
Jordan will remain hostage to natural gas imports, specifically from Israel, according to the book, while it exports its green energy in order to obtain desalinated water from it.
Environmental normalization allows Israel to reshape its position in the energy and water sectors at the regional and global levels, thus enhancing its political and diplomatic power in the region and the world.
