January 1, 2015
middleeasteye.net

US Army Report Calls For 'Military Support' of Israeli Energy Grab

by Nafeez Ahmed

A new report by the US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute emphasises the need for "US security and military support" to its key allies in the Eastern Mediterranean, particularly Israel, over access to recent vast discoveries of regional oil and gas. . . .

Since 2000, the Levant basin - an area encompassing the offshore territories of Israel, Palestine, Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon - has been estimated to hold as much as 1.7 bn barrels of oil and up to 122 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas. As much of the region's potential resources remain undiscovered, geologists believe this could be just a third of the total quantities of fossil fuels in the Levant.

The new US Army report argues that these hydrocarbon discoveries are of "tremendous economic and geostrategic significance," not just for its allies, but for the United States itself. Israel especially stands to "gain considerably from their newly discovered gas wealth" in terms of cost-effective energy for domestic consumption and revenues from gas exports. . . .

The Army report also reveals that Syria could hold significant offshore oil and gas potential. In 2007, before the outbreak of hostilities, President Bashar al-Assad launched a first bidding round to secure investment into new exploration efforts, and another in 2012 that was cancelled due to deteriorating security conditions.

"Once the Syria conflict is resolved, prospects for Syrian offshore production - provided commercial resources are found - are high," observes the report. . . .

The report also mentions significant gas finds in the offshore territories of Lebanon and Palestine, including the Gaza Marine, which holds over 1 tcf - production of which has been "obstruction by Israel over concerns regarding the flow of revenues to Palestinian stakeholders." But in addition to the Gaza Marine, "Palestinian offshore territories near Gaza are believed to hold substantial hydrocarbon potential," . . .

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Nafeez Ahmed PhD, an investigative journalist, international security scholar, is a winner of the Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism. He has also written for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, New Internationalist.

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