What the representative of the Israeli company reported to the Reuters agency
The Aphrodite field is to be interconnected with natural gas production facilities in Egypt with a submarine pipeline, a representative of the Israeli hydrocarbon company New Med Energy, which co-operates the Cyprus field with Chevron and Shell, said today.
As a New Med Energy official told Reuters, “this revised Aphrodite exploitation plan will speed up exploitation of the field and reduce production costs”.
The General Manager of New Med Energy, Yossi Abu, in statements to the Israeli financial newspaper Globes, commented on the revised plan for the exploitation of the Aphrodite field, saying, among other things, that “the regional relations we have developed create new opportunities for cooperation at the regional and international level, as well as and at the level of infrastructure, which will help us move natural gas wherever there is demand around the world. Within this framework, we are immediately promoting the plan for the exploitation of the Aphrodite deposit”, Yossi Abou concluded.
The Israeli economic newspaper Globes comments on this development in today's report, emphasizing that the revision of the Aphrodite field development plan by New Med Energy has been announced, while Israel and Cyprus still have not reached an agreement on the issue of the neighboring Isai field. The newspaper points out that the open issue of the Afroditis-Isai fields has occupied the two countries' Ministries of Energy extensively over the last twelve months.
In September 2022, Israeli Energy Minister Karin Elharar, speaking to state media, expressed the view that she was in favor of Israel withdrawing from Issai and selling its rights to the field to one of the companies already licensed in Cyprus EEZ. Elharar's statements at the time had caused critical comments in Israel, as they were interpreted by the opposition as “a surrender of national interests to Cyprus”, because a relevant Israel-Cyprus agreement signed in 2010 stipulated that in the event of the discovery of fields that would cover both the Israeli and the Cypriot EEZ, then Israel and Cyprus would jointly exploit the field.
The Israeli newspaper Globes states in its report today that “it is considered more likely that the Israeli share in the field in question to be sold to one of the companies already licensed in Cyprus”. However, no specific source is cited to confirm the estimate.
