WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – A proposed Israeli pipeline to deliver natural gas from deposits in the Eastern Mediterranean to European markets is too expensive and will take too long to help countries seeking alternatives to Russian gas any time soon, a senior U.S. diplomat has said.
Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland said, after talks with Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades on Thursday that the proposed EastMed pipeline project wouldn’t be able to immediately deliver the gas Europe now needs to swiftly wean itself off Russian energy because it would run in very deep water and construction would take more than a decade.
“And frankly, we don’t have 10 years, but in 10 years from now, we want to be far, far more green and far more diverse [in energy sources]”, Nuland said.
“So what we are looking for within the hydrocarbon context are options that can get us more gas, more oil for this short transition period,” she added.
Greece, Cyprus, and the Zionist regime signed an agreement in 2020 for the construction of the EastMed pipeline, a 1,900-kilometer undersea pipeline designed to deliver natural gas to Europe by 2025 to help Europe diversify its energy resources.
The project was expected to initially carry 10 billion cubic meters of gas a year to Europe.
The EastMed pipeline to transfer natural gas from disputed waters to Europe via Cyprus and Greece was announced in 2016, and since then several agreements have been signed.
The three sides aimed to complete the $6.5 billion project by 2025 but failed to secure the financing.
The Zionist regime is already shipping gas to Egypt where it undergoes liquefaction at LNG facilities in Idku and Damietta.
In a statement published last January, the U.S. State Department said that it no longer supported the construction of the EastMed gas pipeline project.
Lebanese officials were quoted as saying that the Zionist regime authorities had licensed a company to exploit the gas resources in a disputable area on the maritime border with occupied Palestine.
They warned that the occupying regime may deplete their country’s potential offshore oil and gas reserves after the regime’s companies awarded exploration licenses near Lebanon’s Block 9.