U.S. Lawmakers Talk Turkey to Ankara

Source:Foreign Policy Date:12Apr2019

The title not withstanding, this article is not about US-Turkey relations, but the East-Med energy chess game. Worth a read, because it dispells silly ideas like  an NG pipeline to Italy or Greece.

If the United States has a renewed interest in that part of the world, a big reason is the energy discoveries made in recent years. Oil companies have found large deposits of natural gas off the coasts of Israel, Egypt, and Cyprus—and they just keep coming. This year, ExxonMobil made one of the biggest finds in the world off Cyprus.

America, flush with its own oil and natural gas bonanza, doesn’t need those discoveries. But, Washington figures, Europe might. Europe relies on Russia for more than one-third of its natural gas, and despite a decade of efforts to wean off Russian energy, that reliance is only growing. The new Senate bill, like numerous U.S. efforts before it, seeks to turn the Eastern Mediterranean energy boom into a cudgel to use against Russia’s energy stranglehold, suggesting that the new finds can “support European efforts to diversify” away from Russian gas.