Israel's New Energy Project Has The Egyptians Fuming

The Israelis have a major new energy project in the works called High Dam, a reference to Egypt's Aswan High Dam.It involves a 'dam' in the Mediterranean near the Israeli port of Ashdod that will export electricity to Europe via an undersea electricity cable linking Israel to Cyprus and then relayed via a second cable to Greece and the rest of Europe. The electricity will be generated by Israel's new vast natural gas finds in the area and the project is scheduled to receive joint European and American funding:

The Israel Electric Company (IEC) and Greece's DEH Quantum Energy are expected to sign the MOU in a few weeks' time. This will lead to a feasibility study, which will be followed – if all goes well – by ratification of the project by the Israeli and Cypriot governments, in the course of 2012.

According to the Egyptian newspaper Rose al-Youssef, both former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and businessman Hussein Salem, owner of the company in charge of exporting Egypt's gas, who is currently a fugitive in Spain, knew about this project when they signed deals with the Israeli government.

The closeness of Israel to Cyprus and Greece helped make the High Dam project more feasible, since Israel will be linked to the Cypriot and Greek electricity networks with 53,000 kilometers of connections under the sea to European shores, and is later expected to extend for another 600 kilometers inside European territories.

The electricity generated by the High Dam will provide more than 10 European countries with an electric power estimated at 2,000 megawatts and will reach 4,000 megawatts by 2020.

Israel made information about the dam project available to the majority of European countries involved, but did not notify Egypt, Rose al-Youssef claimed.

*chuckle*

The cable's expected to take 3 years to complete, and the Israeli shave reportedly already made agreements with the Cypriots to cooperate in exploiting the huge gas reserves off both countries' coasts.

The Israelis have reportedly already signed agreements with the Cypriots to jointly exploit the gas resources in th eares of both their coasts.

Oh, and in other related news - Delek Group Ltd. and Noble Energy Inc. have announced that they just discovered another 1.2-1.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas off Israel's coast in the offshore Tanin 1 (Crocodile) well, 120 kilometers northwest of Haifa. Israel may end up being one of the major natural gas producers in the world, especially as these fields are new and largely untapped.