The Eastern Mediterranean Sea is Heating Up
On January 2nd, 2020, Greece, Cyprus, and Israel signed an agreement to construct the EastMed pipeline, that would transport natural gas from the offshore fields of the eastern Mediterranean Sea to mainland Europe. That project would lessen the European Union’s energy dependency on Russia, angering key transit nations of Russian natural gas, who have benefited from the transit fee revenues.
EastMed starts in the Levantine Basin, goes through Greece, and ends in the region of Thesprotia. Its onshore compression stations are in Cyprus and Crete. Because the pipeline ends in Greece, it connects the proposed Poseidon pipeline to Italy. The 1,300-mile pipeline is expected to supply approximately 4% of the EU’s yearly gas imports, which is equivalent to 10 billion cubic meters of gas. As such, it will partially subside natural gas imports from Russia, which currently supply 40% of the European market.
Because Turkey is key for transporting Russian energy reserves to Europe, it opposes the development of EastMed. Considering that its critical role has been a source of leverage over Europe in the past, Turkey seems determined to maintain its strategical privileges. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkey said the contracting countries were framing a “vicious” political scheme to isolate Turkey in the Mediterranean, where it has a long-running territorial dispute with Cyprus, a European Union member, over Northern Cyprus.
In January 2020, Turkey announced the dispatch of a drillship to explore potential oil and gas resources offshore Cyprus. An official statement issued on January 19th, 2020 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, “Our drillship, Yavuz, was relocated on [January 17th] to the Block G in the south of the island in order to conduct its third drilling activity as part of the licenses given to Turkish Petroleum in 2011 by the TRNC [Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus] government.” Following the statement, the EU condemned Turkey for its activity in the region and the European Commission considered the Yavuz dispatch illegal.
Turkey defended its decision to deploy Yavuz by reiterating that the rights of the Turkish Cypriots over the hydrocarbon reserves in the block were neglected. Turkey also stated that if the reserves are found, the oil and gas revenue generated from the block will be shared with Greece, recalling their proposal to Greek Cyprus to share the energy revenue produced in the area.
The region’s political instability, often caused by Turkish assertiveness, demonstrates that contracting countries would struggle to pursue their initial plans to transport the energy resources. Turkey has shown that it will not give up on its geographic advantage and has taken actions to prevent any development that might undermine its role as an essential transit nation. If Turkey does not collaborate, it will make agreements on oil extraction nearly impossible.