Delek Outlines Fresh Israel-Egypt Pipe Proposal
Delek Drilling, one of the partners in Tamar and Leviathan offshore gas fields, is proposing a new pipeline that will connect Israel to Egypt at relatively low cost and short distance.
The new proposed overland pipeline is just 100 km long and would connect Israel's grid to Egypt's grid in a path south of Gaza strip. The proposal was presented December 4 by Delek Drilling CEO Yossu Abu (pictured above) at the 2017 Energy and Business Convention in Tel Aviv.
So far, other proposals to connect Israel with Egypt were undersea pipelines, either the el Arish-Ashkelon pipeline or a new 450 km undersea pipeline requiring over $1bn investment. The new overland 100 km pipeline would cost only $100mn, according to Abu.
However he notes that Israel will anyway be connected to the Arab pipeline when Israeli infrastructure is connected to the Jordanian grid, expected to happen in 2019 when gas from Leviathan is expected to flow to Jordan's Nepco.
Overland gas pipelines raise greater security risks both to Israel and its neighbours.
Despite signs that Egypt's upstream gas industry is recovering strongly, Abu claims that in 2020 the country may lack up to 30 bn m3 and that Israel would be well positioned to supply such a deficiency. That runs counter to the giant Egyptian Zohr field operator, Eni, which indicates that roughly 10bn m3/yr will start flowing from Zohr later this year, and 20bn m3/yr more from late 2019.
Earlier in the convention, Israel's energy minister Yuval Steinitz said that within ten years Israel would become a gas exporter to Western Europe. He also promised that by 2030 Israel would stop using coal for power generation.
Yigal Landau, the CEO of Ratio, a partner in Leviathan project, said that Israel has to remove a few barriers in order to lure new investors, following the failure of the latest licensing round when none of the majors showed any interest. For example he said that Israel has to cancel the obligation to lie a pipeline from every gas field to the Israeli shore.