Italy’s Eni SpA and Paris-based Total Energies on Monday said they made a major natural gas discovery at the Cronos-1 well, in Block 6, offshore Cyprus.
Located about 100 miles southwest of the Cyprus coast, Cronos-1 “encountered several good quality carbonate reservoir intervals and confirmed overall net gas pay of more than 260 meters,” Total Energies said.
“This successful exploration well at Cronos-1 is another illustration of the impact of our exploration strategy, which is focused on discovering resources with low technical cost and low carbon emissions, to contribute to energy security, including to provide an additional source of gas supply to Europe,” said Total Energies’ Kevin McLachlan, senior vice president of exploration.
Total Energies holds a 50% interest in Block 6, where Eni is the operator and holds the other 50% stake. Both companies also are active in several other blocks offshore Cyprus.
Discovery on the right time; Russia’s war in Ukraine appears to have boosted the importance of the Eastern Mediterranean’s natural gas deposits. The EU has resolved to end its dependency on Russian gas, oil and coal by 2027. Whether it will find alternative, competitively priced supplies in five years to cover the 40 per cent of Europe’s gas consumption that is covered by Russia is questionable but the Eastern Mediterranean has now become an option, even if quantities are limited.
The Eastern Mediterranean is on its way to becoming an important gas province. If developed in a timely and successful way, the region’s resources may significantly change the energy picture in the wider Mediterranean region as well as in Europe. Developing these resources will require overcoming numerous major obstacles with geopolitical implications.
Exploitation and export of hydrocarbons resources in the Eastern Mediterranean present enormous technical, administrative, security, legal and political challenges with geo‐political implications.
Europe’s decision to wean itself off Russian energy in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February has awakened interest in all East Mediterranean gas as an alternative supply source.
So, while Israel, Egypt and Cyprus have already discovered major commercial quantities of gas, Lebanon is only just at the beginning of what it hopes will join the new gas era; the country has made almost no progress on exploration. It launched its first bidding round for drilling rights in 2013, but only awarded them five years later. The one exploratory well that resulted, in an area designated Block 4, was completed in 2020 by a consortium of the French company Total, Italy’s Eni and Russia’s Novatek. It found only traces of gas.
For now, Lebanon is still waiting the final version of the Proposal regarding the promising natural gas field in blocks #8 and #9 boosted by the US mediator Amos Hochstein who is leading the indirect negotiations to resolve the maritime border dispute between Lebanon and Israel.
Cyprus and Lebanon signed on April 2022 an agreement delineating their respective offshore exclusive economic zones in 2007, but the Lebanese parliament has yet to ratify it amid the country’s ongoing maritime border dispute with Israel.
Nevertheless, Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said after talks with his Cypriot counterpart in Nicosia that “with Cyprus there’s no problem, once we found gas we’re ready to go, put it together.”
“We talked about it and I can assure you that Lebanon is ready to do it,” Bou Habib said.
The Lebanese top diplomat’s remarks come as Europe is seeking new energy sources to wean itself off Russian gas in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Both Eastern Mediterranean countries are likely to be blessed with large deposits of natural gas off their shores.
The question is how to turn these pressing challenges into opportunities. There is no easy answer or solution. Until and unless these challenges are managed carefully and wisely, the myopic policies currently being pursued by the countries in the region without regard for their consequences will prevail. A genuine mechanism that would lead to joint projects, including development and exploitation of hydrocarbon resources, might offer an interim solution. In a perfect world, this would have the potential to change the entire region’s political and economic scene for the better.
