AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – A deal that will transfer control of a natural gas pipeline between the Israeli-occupied territories and Egypt is expected to be closed in the next few days, the companies say.
Texas-based Noble Energy, the Zionist regime’s Delek Drilling and Egyptian East Gas Co have partnered in a venture called EMED, which last year agreed to buy a 39% stake in the subsea EMG pipeline for $518 million that will carry the occupying regime’s gas exports to Egypt.
In a regulatory filing in Tel Aviv, Delek said the shares have already been transferred to the buyers while the funds are currently being held in a trust. It noted that no closing conditions remained.
The Zionist regime looks at Jordan and Egypt as the potential buyers of gas which it claims to have found in the eastern Mediterranean. Egypt's trade with the regime is larger than its trade with some Arab countries.
The reserves, discovered in the eastern Mediterranean Levant Basin since 2009, straddle the territories of several countries - including Cyprus, Greece, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria - whose relations are strained on a number of fronts.
Lebanon has warned its Mediterranean neighbors that a planned gas pipeline from the occupied territories to the European Union must not be allowed to violate its maritime borders.
Beirut has an unresolved maritime border dispute with the Zionist regime over a sea area of about 860 sq km extending along the edge of three of Lebanon’s southern energy blocks.
The regime is hoping to enlist several European countries in the construction of a 2,000 km pipeline linking vast eastern Mediterranean gas resources to Europe through Cyprus, Greece and Italy at a cost of $7 billion.