Until now, natural gas supplies from the Eastern Mediterranean to Europe were seen as a distant prospect. Now, suddenly, everything is starting to take shape. This is a clear reason for joy for natural gas consumers in Europe. In addition to the above-mentioned countries receiving natural gas from the Southern Gas Corridor, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia are also expecting natural gas supplies from SOCAR within the framework of the signed memorandum on the so-called Solidarity Ring. Austria also hopes to diversify its natural gas supplies through cooperation with SOCAR at the expense of “Gazprom” and Putin’s financial needs to finance his dirty war in Ukraine.
The news that Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR is acquiring a stake in Israel's Tamar gas field is significant for several reasons. (Details of the possible acquisition of a stake in the Tamar gas field by the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) can be found here: https://blacksea-caspia.eu/en/socar-acquires-stake-israels-tamar-field ).
The first reason is that this news confirm the strength of the alliance between Azerbaijan and Israel. Azerbaijan is the largest supplier of oil to Israel, especially since it has the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline to carry out the deliveries. The pipeline literally starts from the oil fields on the Caspian shelf and ends at the terminal of the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean coast. It is difficult to find a better option for delivering oil to Israel.
Strategic cooperation between Azerbaijan and Israel throws into the trash bin all the “accusations” about Israel’s hostility to Islam, as well as the equally stinking accusations about Azerbaijan’s unwillingness and inability to cooperate with democratic countries. Both theses have been widely promoted in the European media space, including in the European Parliament, but the only serious conclusion that can be drawn from them is an assessment of the naivety (in some cases) or meanness of their disseminators (in other cases). In fact, the main actor in this story is Putin’s propaganda, but many naive people who repeat these two statements, do not notice or do not want to see that they have been “recruited under a false flag.”
The second reason why the news of SOCAR's acquisition of a stake in the Tamar gas field should be given special significance is not so much political as it is of great practical value for the future. In cooperation with several global companies, Azerbaijan has built the Southern Gas Corridor, through which natural gas is supplied to Georgia, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Albania and Italy. It is through this corridor that natural gas is currently actually and physically supplied to both Serbia and Moldova.
The existence of the Southern Gas Corridor is something like an “aspen stake” in the heart of the vampire “Gazprom” (the first stake was driven in by Putin himself, but that’s another topic). When it is not busy deceiving us by claiming that Azerbaijani gas is Russian (!?), Putin’s propaganda in Bulgaria tirelessly repeats how little Azerbaijani gas there really is and how it is not enough for anything. Well, now there have been radical changes in the “disposition”. The natural gas reserves in the Israeli Eastern Mediterranean region are enormous (both “Leviathan” and “Tamar”), and now there is every chance that Azerbaijan will become a supplier of Israeli natural gas to Europe.
SOCAR has a completely new and reliable infrastructure for natural gas supplies to Europe. There is an agreement between Azerbaijan and the European Commission to double the current supplies of natural gas by SOCAR to the territory of the European Union. In other words, there is a market and there is an infrastructure for supplies.
Azerbaijan's assumption of the role of supplier of Israeli gas, solves one of the most difficult problems of natural gas supplies from the Eastern Mediterranean to Europe - the issue of reducing the necessary investments.
There are projects (in fact, mega-projects) to build underwater pipelines to deliver natural gas to Greece, but for obvious reasons they are much longer than the underwater pipelines that would deliver Israeli hydrocarbons to the existing pipeline in Turkey. However, relations between Turkey and Israel are not flourishing at present, mainly because of Turkey’s position as a protector of the Palestinians. This undoubtedly represents a serious obstacle to using the Asia Minor route to deliver Israeli natural gas to Europe.
However, Azerbaijan's participation in the production of natural gas at the Tamar field changes the situation in a much more favorable direction. Azerbaijan has the best relations with both Turkey and Israel, and SOCAR's participation in the development of the “Tamar” field could be the global step that opens the door for Israeli gas supplies to Europe.
Until now, natural gas supplies from the Eastern Mediterranean to Europe were seen as a distant prospect. Now, suddenly, everything is starting to take shape. This is a clear reason for joy for natural gas consumers in Europe. In addition to the above-mentioned countries receiving natural gas from the Southern Gas Corridor, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia are also expecting natural gas supplies from SOCAR within the framework of the signed memorandum on the so-called Solidarity Ring. Austria also hopes to diversify its natural gas supplies through cooperation with SOCAR at the expense of “Gazprom” and Putin’s financial needs to finance his dirty war in Ukraine.
So we have reason to be optimistic. Of course, tomorrow we will hear a chorus of people who oppose such cooperation – together with them, lobbyists for natural gas supplies from North Africa will “sing in one voice”; and lobbyists for an alternative route for an underwater gas pipeline through Greece; and extreme nationalists among the Armenian diaspora, who form a powerful lobby that feels at home in some European states, as well as in some European institutions.
But overall – we can congratulate each other. Now all that remains is for the EU investment banks to wake up and reverse their stupid refusal to finance hydrocarbon pipelines. They just have to remember that natural gas is not only a fuel, but also an important raw material for industry...