Yuval Steinitz, the Minister of Energy, Infrastructure and Water Resources of Israel, said in his speech at the Ministerial Session under the 22nd World Petroleum Congress that energy is important in the process of developing normalization and bilateral relations between Turkey and Israel.
Western Europe meets its natural gas needs from Russia and the North Sea, but the resources in the North Sea have come to an end. On the other hand, there is a large amount of natural gas reserves in the southern Cyprus and Egypt regions, which are the economic zones of Israel.
Steinitz said: “We believe that the Eastern Mediterranean will take the place of the resources in the North Sea in the coming period, Europe will get natural gas from the Eastern Mediterranean and this region will become a reliable source.We are conducting intensive negotiations on two important pipeline projects”:
– One of these is Turkey. A pipeline from Israel to Turkey is planned for both domestic consumption of Turkey and natural gas transmission to Europe.
– The other is the pipeline that will extend to Italy through the connection of Southern Cyprus and Greece. The Italian government explained that this project is one of the highest priority projects for them.
After four rounds of talks, Israel and Turkey decided to complete an intergovernmental agreement to build the pipeline before the end of this year. Turkish Energy Minister Berat Albayrak is expected to make a visit to Israel until the end of this year.
