“…its gas resources are bigger than anything we have assessed in the United States!”-Brenda Pierce, U.S. Geological Survey, statement about the Levant Basin Province (aka Leviathan)
The discovery of huge natural gas reserves in the Mediterranean Sea is the true cause of warmongering between the United States, Europe, Cyprus (which is divided into Greek and Turkish halves), Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Iran and Palestinian Gaza Strip.
In 2009, Texas U.S.A. based Noble Energy (formerly known as Noble Affiliates, and not to be confused with Nobel Energy Management) discovered a huge gas field while under hire by Israel. It was the biggest gas field discovery of 2009, called Tamar.
Image via Noble Energy.
In October 2010, Noble Energy discovered an even bigger gas field. Israel declared the area an Exclusive Economic Zone. It’s part of an even bigger area known as the Leviathan Gas Field. The problem is that Lebanon says the field extends into its territory and on August 2010, almost two months before the second discovery by Noble Energy, petitioned the United Nations to protect their rights.
Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker, Nabih Berri, said Israel is “…ignoring the fact that according to the maps the deposit extends into Lebanese waters.”
Lebanon is justified, as Israel (along with the United States) never ratified the 1982 UN Convention on Law of the Sea. Under that law Lebanon has a right to the gas, in the field called Tamar.
Israeli officials responded with threats of war: “We will not hesitate to use our force and strength to protect not only the rule of law but the international maritime law.”-Uzi Landau, Minister of National Infrastructure of Israel
Note how Israeli officials always make claims of enforcing international laws, yet they have refused to sign onto most of those laws!
In fact Israel periodically sends military aircraft into Lebanon’s air space, and even drops a few bombs now and again.
But, the Leviathan Gas Field doesn’t involve just Israel and Lebanon. In December 2011, NATO-Turkish warships began firing on an area of the Mediterranean where Cyprus had just discovered an extension of the Leviathan Gas Field. Cyprus declared the area an Exclusive Economic Zone, it is also known as Block-12 of the Leviathan Gas Field.
Greek Cypriot officials issued not only words of war, but threats of Ethnic Cleansing: “If Turkey does not change its gunboat diplomacy and stop playing the part of regional police officer, there will be consequences which, for sure, will not be good, either for the whole region or the Turkish people and first and foremost for Turkish Cypriots.”-Dimitris Christofias, Greek President of Cyprus
For some reason the Western media has not reported much of anything about the disputes over the Leviathan Gas Field.
2011 was also the year that NATO-Turkey went from being Israel’s only ally in the region, to becoming an enemy. Turkey officially blamed it on Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid ships to Gaza, but it looks like it’s really about the gas. By the end of 2011, Israel canceled a $90-million military contract with Turkey, because Israeli officials felt Turkey was after their portion of the gas field.
Israel has allied itself with Greek Cyprus, when it comes to extracting the natural gas. While Noble Energy is officially a Houston, Texas, company, most of the company stocks are actually held by petroleum companies of Greek Cyprus (Cypriot national energy company) and Israel (Delek Drilling LP & Avner Oil Exploration LLP).
Noble Energy claims there is 33-trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Leviathan fields, enough to provide Israel with 100 years worth! In fact, the United States government is so interested that the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) was sent in to confirm its size.
You might remember that, in 2011, for a short time it looked like Israeli-U.S. relations were deteriorating. Again, the Western media failed to report that U.S. officials told Lebanese officials that the U.S. supported their claim to the Tamar gas fields!
The U.S. mended their relations with Israel, by taking a stand against Turkey’s desire to control a portion of Leviathan. U.S. officials did this by supporting Israel’s new ally Greek Cyprus.
U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, told the Greek Cyprus Foreign Minister, Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, to go full bore on drilling their gas field. Kozakou-Marcoullis told a crowd at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars that Turkey was “the neighborhood bully”, and that the United States was fully supporting Greek Cyprus (thus, in a round-a-bout way Israel) in their gas field operations.
February 16, 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a historic first time visit to Greek Cyprus. He called the new alliance a “natural relationship”, and added: “I came here to develop our bilateral ties, our economic ties and ties in the field of energy.”
Oh, but wait, Turkey now looks to be Israel’s ally again. In fact Turkey has switched from supporting Syria to supporting military action against Syria! What happened?
Turkey has realized that by connecting a relatively short pipeline to Leviathan, they could potentially become self sufficient in natural gas, and maybe even oil. This would end their current dependence on petroleum from the Black Sea (Russia, Romania), and make it no longer a necessity to connect to the planned pipeline coming from Iran.
What about NATO-Greece? Ever notice how this economic disaster just keeps dragging on? It could be because Greece is a transit rout for oil and gas pipelines coming from the Caspian Sea, and Middle East (namely Iran). These so called bail out negotiations are more likely efforts to get Greece to join Leviathan.
The problem for Greece is that it would need a very long expensive pipeline to connect to the known gas/oil reserves of Leviathan, meaning it’s still cheaper to get their petroleum from the Middle East! It’s also still cheaper to continue getting their petroleum from the Middle East, than to buy it from those countries (Israel, Cyprus, etc) that are planning to mine Leviathan for everything it’s got.
This is the real reason Greece is being run into the ground.
By the way, want to know what the USGS found when they explored the Eastern Mediterranean? Potentially, 345-trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 3.4-billion barrels of oil!!!
This sheds new light on the real reasons for the 2011 overthrow of the Egyptian and Libyan governments in North Africa! The people of those countries were justified, but look what it’s got them; increasing instability in Libya, and a pro-U.S.-Israel military government in Egypt.
And what about the almost daily Israeli military attacks on the Gaza Strip, for the past two years, that the Western-NATO news-media is not reporting!? The latest attack, on February 26, saw Israeli planes bomb a cement factory. The week prior saw Israeli forces cut off electrical power to Gaza. On and on. Yet barely any mention in Western mainstream news-media.
What countries surround the Eastern Mediterranean? Cyprus, Gaza, Greece, Egypt, Israel, Libya, Lebanon, Turkey and Syria!!!
And what about this urgent need to go to war with Iran? It’s not about anything nuclear! Lebanon & Syria (Eastern Mediterranean countries) and Iraq & Iran are a few years away from completing the largest natural gas pipeline in the Middle East. It would rival anything that could be immediately extracted from Leviathan.
“A trilateral agreement between the three countries on the transit of gas has been reached….The first official contract is ready to be signed soon…We plan to transit gas from the South Pars field through Iraq, Syria and then Lebanon to the Mediterranean area and Europe.”-Javad Oji, National Iranian Gas Company
The pipeline from Iran could carry 110-million cubic meters of natural gas per day, for the next 80 years (Iran has the world’s second largest reserves of natural gas)! If this was completed, then it would make developing the Leviathan (new drilling rigs, pipelines, etc) a waste of money. And, the money made off the Iranian dominated pipeline would not be going to the West (ie no benefit to the U.S./U.K./Saudi Arabian U.S. PetroDollar monopoly)!
It would also destroy Israel’s hopes of finally joining the petroleum club.
The other factor, that has most of the European Union in favor of Leviathan (except Greece, by the way some NATO-German officials are now saying Greece needs to get out of the EU), is the fact that current eastern European pipeline projects are turning out to be more expensive than first thought. So much so that some reports (including reports by British Petroleum [BP]) say it would be cheaper to dump those projects in favor of developing Leviathan. But of course, that’s only if Leviathan didn’t have to compete with the huge pipeline coming from Iran.
In fact, as of February 26, Leviathan now has to compete with several gas lines coming from Iran. Iranian gas officials announced they are now building secondary pipelines to Iraq, Syria and on to Europe!
Because the Western media does not report what’s really going on regarding the recently discovered Eastern Mediterranean oil and gas fields, and only reports propagandist lies meant to rally people in support of unjust wars for the benefit of the oil industry, it shows that the Western news media is a tool of deceit for the Red Horseman.
“Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other.”-Revelation 6:4