News and views on the coming collapse
Home » Posts tagged 'mediterranean'
It’s a strange and unprecedented spectacle when countries like Israel, Greece, Egypt, Libya, Turkey, and others lay claims over the Mediterranean, while NATO scrambles to stave off an outright war, among its own members.
Under pressure in Libya–where it’s gone head-to-head with General Haftar in an ongoing battle to decide who gets to ultimately control the country’s oil revenues–and floundering in Syria, Turkey is once again upping the ante in the Mediterranean, this time preparing to issue new oil and gas exploration licenses in direct confrontation with the European Union.
It’s not just about Cyprus, anymore. Turkey’s state-run oil and gas company has been given licenses from the Turkish government to explore for oil and gas in 24 locations in the East Mediterranean. Seven of those locations are just off the coast of key Greek islands.
It’s a direct provocation that has Greece infuriated, and experts worried that this could lead to direct clashes once Turkey starts exploration drilling.
Last weekend, Turkey released a draft plan for Turkish Petroleum’s exploration license.
Source: Resmigazete.gov.tr
On Monday, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said in a statement that the country “stands ready to deal with this provocation should Turkey decide to implement this decision”.
The draft plan explicitly violates Greek sovereignty, and it is designed to take advantage of a new maritime boundary agreement Erdogan wrangled last year with the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Libya. This was the trade-off for Libya’s aid in fighting back General Haftar in his push to take the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
The maritime boundary is meant to perform a pincer movement against Cyprus, which is drilling offshore in its EEZ where Turkey has also provocatively deployed drillships. In the Greek Cypriot EEZ alone, there are an estimated 120 billion cubic meters of natural gas, for which drilling began in 2011. The first license here was granted in 2008 to American Noble Energy (the same company behind the massive Israeli discoveries).
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Things have been quite active in the Eastern Mediterranean lately, with Israel, Cyprus and Greece pushing forward for the realization of the EastMed pipeline, a new gas conduit destined to diversify Europe’s natural gas sources and find a long-term reliable market outlet for all the recent Mediterranean gas discoveries. The three sides have reached an agreement in late November (roughly a year after signing the MoU) to lay the pipeline, the estimated cost of which hovers around $7 billion (roughly the same as rival TurkStream’s construction cost). Yet behind the brave facade, it is still very early to talk about EastMed as a viable and profitable project as it faces an uphill battle with traditionally difficult Levantine geopolitics, as well as field geology.
The EastMed gas pipeline is expected to start some 170 kilometers off the southern coast of Cyprus and reach Otranto on the Puglian coast of Italy via the island of Crete and the Greek mainland. Since most of its subsea section is projected to be laid at depths of 3-3.5 kilometer, in case it is built it would become the deepest subsea gas pipeline, most probably the longest, too, with an estimated length of 1900km. The countries involved proceed from the premise that the pipeline’s throughput capacity would be 20 BCM per year (706 BCf), although previous estimates were within the 12-16 BCm per year interval. According to Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli Energy Minister, the stakeholders would need a year to iron out all the remaining administrative issues and 4-5 years to build the pipeline, meaning it could come onstream not before 2025.
The idea of EastMed was first flaunted around 2009-2010 as the first more or less substantial gas discovery in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Tamar gas field in Israel’s offshore zone, paved the way for speculations about an impending gas boom.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The U.S. Navy has increased its Mediterranean fleet, just a couple of weeks before Exxon is due to send two surveying vessels to explore offshore Cyprus near the area where Turkey blocked an Eni drilling ship from prospecting in February, Turkish news outlet Ahval reports.
Last year, ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum signed an exploration and production (E&P) sharing contract with the Cyprus government, under which the companies will start drilling in a block offshore Cyprus this year.
Two weeks ago, Turkish Navy vessels threatened to sink a drilling ship that oil major Eni has hired to explore for oil and gas offshore Cyprus—a divided island whose northern part is run by Turkish Cypriots and is recognized only by Turkey.
According to local media reports, four or five ships of the Turkish Navy tried to prevent Saipem’s 12000 drilling vessel from performing exploration in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Cyprus.
Turkey, which recognizes the northern Turkish Cypriot government and doesn’t have diplomatic relations with the internationally recognized government of Cyprus, claims that part of the Cyprus offshore area is under the jurisdiction of Turkish Cypriots or Turkey.
Earlier this month, Eni said that together with France’s Total, it had made a promising gas discovery offshore Cyprus, confirming that the Zohr-like play—where Eni found the biggest gas deposit in the Mediterranean offshore Egypt—extends into the Cyprus Exclusive Economic Zone.
According to Greek newspaper Ekathimerini, Exxon is intent on surveying its block offshore Cyprus despite the Turkish Navy activities and the blockade on Eni’s prospecting in the area.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Turkey is no stranger to aerial conflict of late.
After months of back and forth banter between Ankara and Moscow regarding supposed Russian incursions into Turkish airspace, Erdogan finally “went there” on November 24 when Turkish F-16s shot down a Russian Su-24 near the border with Syria. One of the two pilots was killed.
Although Turkey claimed the (17 second) violation of its airspace was unacceptable and just cause for military engagement, it was just three years prior that Erdogan had decried the downing of a Turkish F-4 phantom in Syria’s airspace.”A short-term border violation can never be a pretext for an attack,” he declared.
But that wasn’t the only hypocrisy apparent in Turkey’s brazen move. According to the University of Thessaly (whose statistics are based on the Greek military’s tally), there were 2,244 violations of Greece’s airspace by Turkish jets in 2014 alone, representing an increase of some 250% from 2013.Here’s a look at the graphic:
Well don’t look now, but Turkish and Greek fighters just got into a dogfight over the Aegean.
Here’s eKathimerini:
Greek and Turkish jets engaged in a brief dogfight over the Aegean Sea on Tuesday after Turkish aircraft violated Greek national air space several times.A formation of six Turkish jets, flanked by two CN-235 aircraft that were not in formation, violated Greek air space nine times, according to Greek defense officials.
In all cases the Turkish jets were chased off by Greek aircraft. Two of the eight Turkish aircraft were armed.
The violations were the first since early December following a minor diplomatic spat between the two Aegean neighbors after a message on Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s Twitter account accused Turkish jets of repeated transgressions in the Aegean.
Since Erdogan is a fair man, and because we’re sure Turkey’s attack on the Russian warplane was completely legitimate, we suppose the Turkish President would have understood if Greece had shot down one of Turkey’s fighters.
Based on the continued failure of the negotiating parties to make any substantive progress in the talks over Greek debt payments, the financial world is tied up in knots over a possible Greek exit from the European Union. The uncertainty has manifested in both high and low finance, with a sharp sell-off in bonds, particularly EU and Greek government debt, and heightened retail withdrawals from Greek banks as depositors become wary of capital controls that would be imposed in the case of an exit. All concerned parties should likely breathe easier. Despite Greece’s almost complete lack of financial integrity, neither NATO nor the EU can afford the political cost of a Greek exit from the EU.
Sabre-rattling much? For the first time in history, Chinese and Russian navies will begin a significant joint naval exercise in The Mediterranean Sea in mid-May. As RT reports, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng, “The aim is to deepen both countries’ friendly and practical cooperation, and increase our navies’ ability to jointly deal with maritime security threats,” but diplomatically added “these exercises are not aimed at any third party and have nothing to do with the regional situation.” Against a background of this week’s “upgraded Japan-American military relationship” following Abe’s visit to Obama, as one analyst notes, “the geopolitical significance of its exercising alongside Russia will not be lost on the U.S. and NATO.”
The Chinese and Russian Navies have exercised together since 2012 in waters off Russia’s eastern seaboard; but as RT reports,
The Russian and Chinese Navies are to hold a joint exercise in the Mediterranean Sea in mid-May, a first in that part of the world. A total of nine warships from the two countries are to participate, Beijing said.
“The aim is to deepen both countries’ friendly and practical cooperation, and increase our navies’ ability to jointly deal with maritime security threats,” Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said on Thursday in a monthly news briefing.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Precisely one week ago in “A Black Swan Lands In Southern Austria: The Ripple Effects Of “Mini-Greece Going Off In The Heartland Of Europe“, when analyzing the consequences of the collapse of Austria’s bad bank, we noted perhaps the biggest paradox of Europe’s emergency preparedness response to the Greek collapse and imminent expulsion from the Eurozone: namely that the biggest threat to German banks was no longer in some Mediterranean nation, but in its very own back yard. To wit:
Irony #2, and the biggest one of all: while German banks had spent the past 3 years preparing for the inevitable Grexit and offloading all their exposure to the now insolvent Greek state, it was a waterfall chain of events which started in Germany’s own “back yard”, courtesy of auditors who decided it was unnecessary to mark losses to market until it was far too late, and the immediate outcome is that one ninth of until recently Aaa/AAA-rated Austria is now also insolvent. And that is just the beginning.One can only imagine how many such other “0% risk-weighted” Pandora boxes lie in wait across what are otherwise considered Europe’s safest banks, provinces and nations.
Indeed, it was just the beginning, and moments ago we got confirmation that the next domino has tipped over, following a Reuters report that Germany’s deposit protection fund will take over the property lender Duesseldorfer Hypothekenbank AG (DuesselHyp), which has “run into problems” due to its exposure to Austrian lender Hypo Alpe Adria’s “bad bank” Heta.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
