Last updated on September 11th, 2021 at 03:09 pm
Egypt will begin importing natural gas from the Israeli regime by mid-January 2020, a senior industry source says.
The unnamed source, who was quoted by Reuters on Sunday, added that Israel’s gas exports to the Arab country would gradually reach 7 billion cubic meters.
Last year, the Egyptian company, Dolphinus Holdings, signed a landmark deal with the Israeli companies operating the gas fields of Leviathan and Tamar in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Back in October, the Israeli companies announced that they were boosting the amount of natural gas they intend to export to the African country.
Reuters further quoted an unnamed source in the Israeli energy industry as estimating that the value of gas from both fields now stands at $19.5 billion – $14 billion coming from the Leviathan field and $5.5 billion from the Tamar gas field.
The energy and water resources ministry of the Israeli regime gave its final approval for the start of production at the giant Leviathan field on Thursday after a court overturned a temporary injunction granted over environmental concerns.
In September, Israel inked a $15 billion deal with Egypt to use a gas terminal in Ashkelon for exports of gas to the Arab country, despite opposition from Lebanon which views the gas as being stolen by the occupying regime.
The gas will be supplied via a 90 km-long subsea pipeline that connects Ashkelon to el-Arish in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, but first the gas must pass through the Israeli terminal in Ashkelon.
Israel looks at Jordan and Egypt as the potential buyers of the gas which it claims to have found in the eastern Mediterranean. Egypt’s trade with Israel is larger than its trade with some Arab countries.
Other than Jordan, Egypt is the only Arab nation with formal relations with Israel under a peace treaty signed by former president Anwar Sadat in 1979.
