The Energy Equation in the Eastern Mediterranean.

• Author: Kavaz, Ismail
• Position: ARITICLE

Introduction

The Eastern Mediterranean Basin has become popular since the beginning of the 2000s, especially in the context of the potential energy resources in the region. Along with this potential, debates on discoveries, production processes, and transfer options of the resources have continued. Although the current situation in the region started 20 years ago, the historical process of offshore drilling in the Eastern Mediterranean goes back to the 1960s. During this period, Egypt and Israel carried out various drilling operations. (1) However, success could not be achieved due to the technical deficiencies and conditions of that period. In the early 2000s, exploration activities in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin began again with the small-scale discoveries of Israel. The discoveries of Tamar and Leviathan fields located in Israeli territorial waters in 2009 and 2010 caused international attention to turn to this region. These two fields were the world's largest deep-sea gas discoveries in that period. Later, the discoveries of the Aphrodite field in 2011 and the Zohr field in 2015 have moved the Eastern Mediterraneans position from regional to a global level. In brief, the discovery of a substantial amount of energy resources overtime in the Eastern Mediterranean has turned the region into an environment of multidimensional competition.

As its name signifies, the Eastern Mediterranean Basin covers the area in the East of the Mediterranean Sea. This regions western boundary starts from Sicily and Tunisia, while the eastern frontier extends to the coasts of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. (2) In the Eastern Mediterranean, the exploration and drilling activities have been conducted intensively in the area between the South of Turkey and North of Israel, Egypt, and Libya. Therefore, Turkey, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), the Greek Administration of Southern Cyprus (GASC), Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Greece, Israel, and Palestine are the countries to have the inherent rights to explore and exploit the energy resources in the region. In this sense, some of these countries' exploration and drilling activities have continued in the region for a long time. Turkey, Egypt, Israel, and GASC are the leading countries that have maintained drilling activities in the Eastern Mediterranean. Among these, while Egypt, Israel, and GASC have carried out several explorations, Turkey has recently started pursuing drilling operations. The countries that have not yet drilled are Syria, Lebanon, Libya, and Palestine. It is quite clear that ensuring energy independence and security by discovering and producing hydrocarbon resources has strategic importance for all countries in the region. Therefore, the resources discovered in the region in the last 20 years and waiting to be discovered in the near future are crucial for both the political and economic balances in the Eastern Mediterranean.

In addition to exploration and drilling activities, several technical, commercial, legal, and political challenges need to be overcome to extract and export the resources from the region. In this context, determining the maritime boundaries between the countries in the region is one of the main problems in the Eastern Mediterranean. This problem has caused certain delays and inconveniences in exploration and export operations. To solve the said problem, countries in the region need to meet on a common platform and design the maritime zones on an equitable basis. However, the maximalist attitudes of some actors in the region prevent the resources from being shared fairly and justly.

On the other hand, the regions hydrocarbon resource potential offers essential opportunities to enable local and global cooperation, increase energy supply security, and establish a stable political system. (3) According to the latest estimates, the oil and gas potentials of the region are almost 5 billion barrels and over 13.5 trillion cubic meters, respectively. Moreover, the economic value of this potential is worth hundreds of billion dollars. For this reason, the region needs to transform into a geography that provides economic benefit rather than an environment of conflict. Therefore, a joint agreement platform is required in the region with the participation of all parties.

The main debate in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin can be categorized into three headings: economic, political, and judicial. These three fundamental issues are closely associated with the energy resource potential in the region. In this context, two major points become prominent: utilization of the hydrocarbon resource potential in the region and transferring the resources to the international markets. These matters lead to some political and judicial problems for both the countries and actors in the region. Therefore, several challenges must be overcome to allow optimal discovery and exploration activities in the Eastern Mediterranean. One of the first things to be done is to establish a cooperation organization encompassing all countries in the region.

Within the framework of the issues mentioned above, this research aims to analyze the competition in the Eastern Mediterranean from the perspective of energy resources. The structure of this article consists of three parts. First, the study focuses on the energy resource potential and discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin. The second part will present the production processes of the discovered gas resources and possible transfer routes of these resources. The final part includes a general evaluation and concluding remarks related to the energy competition in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Energy Resource Potential and Discoveries in the Region

The debate on hydrocarbon potential in the Eastern Mediterranean has continued for a long time. One of the first studies about this subject was made by the U.S. Geological Survey in 2010. (4) According to this study the Leviathan Basin, which comprises the open sea of Israel, Palestine, the South of Cyprus (5) Island, and Lebanon, holds approximately 1.7 billion barrels of crude oil and 3.5 trillion cubic meters of gas. In addition, it is estimated that there are 1.8 billion barrels of crude oil and 6.3 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves in the Nile Delta Basin, which is in the maritime zone of Egypt. Therefore, the hydrocarbon resource potential of only these two basins corresponds to approximately 3.5 billion barrels of oil and 10 trillion cubic meters of gas.

Apart from the abovementioned estimations, some researches show the existence of significant resource potential in the western part of the Eastern Mediterranean. However, detailed drilling operations have not been conducted as yet in these fields. On the other hand, a limited number of seismic surveys are being carried out, especially around the Crete (Girit), Rhodes (Rodos), and Kastellorizo (Meis) islands, to prove the actual hydrocarbon potential of this region. According to private research conducted by Flow Energy in 2012, the energy resource potential of this area is around 1.5 billion barrels of oil and 3.5 trillion cubic meters of gas. (6)

Another energy resource in the Eastern Mediterranean is gas hydrate formations. Since gas hydrates are mainly found in frozen soils and rock structures under the sea, they are considered an important energy resource for the future. Gas hydrates are generally in crystal formations that consist of water and gas molecules at high pressure and low temperature. (7) Only 1 cubic meter of this energy resource contains 164 cubic meters of natural gas. (8) Therefore, gas hydrates have the potential to be a crucial energy source. However, there is currently no commercially viable way to extract them because the reserves are in solid form and therefore the extraction process cannot follow conventional gas drilling techniques. In other words, recent drilling technologies are not suitable enough to extract this energy resource.

Although there is no specific data about the gas hydrate potential in the Eastern Mediterranean, many predictions have been made on this issue. The producible gas hydrate capacity in the Eastern Mediterranean is estimated at around 98 trillion cubic meters. (9) Considering the current global natural gas reserves, which are approximately 200 trillion cubic meters, it is noteworthy that the gas hydrate potential in the Eastern Mediterranean alone is roughly half of the world's total reserves. (10) In fact, this situation shows that the competition in the Eastern Mediterranean also includes the struggle to exploit the gas hydrate resources in the region.

The estimated potential of the hydrocarbon resources in the Eastern Mediterranean is supported by the gas discoveries realized since 2009, making the region of great interest to the energy markets. Graph 1 details the amounts of gas discovered in the Eastern Mediterranean between 2009 and 2019. According to these figures, the first major gas reserves were discovered in Tamar and Leviathan fields offshore from Israel. These fields are the world's greatest deepsea gas discoveries in the period 2001 to 2010. (11) In between 2011 and 2014, the modest but most significant development was the discovery of the Aphrodite gas field in the South of Cyprus. In August 2015, the Zohr field was discovered off Egypt's coast by the Italian company ENI. This field is the most significant discovery ever made in the Eastern Mediterranean to date. Recently, a considerable amount of gas reserves was discovered in the Calypso and Glaucus fields located in the South of Cyprus. Along with the other discoveries, approximately 2.5 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves were found in the entire region between 2009 and 2019. (12) Therefore, it can be seen that approximately 25 percent of the total natural gas reserve potential has been discovered in the Eastern Mediterranean over the last two decades.

As can be seen...