The gas field in Aphrodite Cyprus is located 16 km south of Limassol in the Mediterranean Sea. With respect to the Leviathan gas field, it is 30 km towards the northwest in Cypriot exclusive Economic Zone(EEZ) in the water of 1700m. It was in the year 2010 December when the Leviathan Natural Gas field was discovered in the water of 1645 m in Levantine Basin, about 130 km towards the west of Haifa in Israel.
The Leviathan reservoir is the largest project in Isreal’s history. With an investment of about $3.5 billion, the aim of the project was to transport huge amounts of natural gas in a safe and reliable manner to the market of Israel as well as for export purposes.
While developing the reservoir, production wells of 5km depth (below sea level) were drilled and the transmission pipe was laid on the seabed. In order to avoid the use of land resources, special processing facilities were created at the sea by following the National Outline Plan instructions.
21BCM of natural gas is produced every year from the Leviathan reservoir’s preliminary development plan. It also includes the construction of production wells, processing platform on the sea as well as a subsea pipeline for transmission with a production capacity of 12 BCM. All these will help in connecting the Israel Natural Gas Lines(INGL) pipelines, domestic market as well as the states in the neighborhood.
The domestic market will witness a significant rise in the gas supply capacity besides the establishment of energy redundancy as well as security. The volume of Natural gas available to Israel State will get doubled because of the INGL pipeline’s connection with the Leviathan reservoir. The systems responsible for processing and transmission which carry natural gas and condensate from the open sea will also become double. All these will create notable changes in the local market. It includes the expansion of electricity production using natural gas, emerging of new sectors that can use this safe, reliable and locally available raw material.
The presence of the Leviathan reservoir as an anchor of regional energy makes it suitable for catering to the energy requirements of the countries in its neighbors as well as other international companies present in the region. The contracts for exporting large volumes of natural gas to countries like Turkey, Cyprus, Egypt, Palestine Authority, and Jordan are also being promoted by the Leviathan partners
The world is currently witnessing a rise in demand for this clean fuel, so, in order to diversify the natural resources in the area, natural gas transmission pipeline construction is being promoted by the Ministry of Energy.
