Gas discovery in East Mediterranean likely to spark regional disputes

A recent discovery of natural gas in the eastern Mediterranean, the exploration of which is said to make it one of the largest natural gas producing regions in the world, may trigger disputes between countries in the region.

Last week, Christopher Schenk, who heads a US Geological Survey (USGS) team assessing global oil and gas reserves, said the Levant Basin Province lying mostly off the coast of Israel and Lebanon could hold 3.4 trillion cubic meters of recoverable gas -- making it one of the world’s richest deposits. According to the reports, Schenk was invited by Israel’s Infrastructure Ministry last week to discuss the results of the survey of the area, which stretches from a few miles inland in Israel and Lebanon out towards the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. In Greek Cyprus, authorities were reluctant to make a huge deal out of the discovery, which could have huge implications for Cyprus, the English-language Cyprus Mail daily reported on Thursday. “Exploratory drilling should take place -- scheduled in one or two years -- and then we can speak of specific quantities and the type of hydrocarbons,” Solon Kasinis, the head of the Greek Cypriot government’s energy service, was quoted as saying by the Cyprus Mail, as he also noted that Greek Cypriot leader Dimitris Christofias has been handling the issue himself. The island is divided into Greek and Turkish zones. As of Friday, there was no official statement regarding the issue from the Turkish Foreign Ministry. But, in recent years, Ankara has on many occasions made clear that according to international law, the sea boundaries between the countries and the limits of the continental shelf of each country need to be delineated via consensus among all coastal and neighboring countries when the issue is a semi-closed sea such as the East Mediterranean. Since 2003, Greek Cyprus has sought to sign agreements with other coastal states to delineate the island’s continental shelf in the Mediterranean, angering Turkey. News reports, meanwhile, said that while the discovery of the reserves could potentially mean a huge economic windfall for Israel and Lebanon, both resource-poor nations, it could also spark a new war between the two neighbors, who are already technically at war and have no diplomatic relations. Israel has a signed agreement with Jordan on the border in the Gulf of Eilat, and has unwritten agreements with Egypt and Palestine. There’s no such agreement with Lebanon. In cases of dispute, it is usual practice to hand the decision to arbitrators, which are listed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982. Israel is not a signatory to the convention because it is concerned about biased arbitrators. http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-219006-102-gas-discovery-in-east-mediterranean-likely-to-spark-regional-disputes.html