ATHENS — The European Union is being squeezed by record-high natural gas prices and calling for Russia to boost exports — but that doesn’t mean every pipeline project is an easy sell.
The EastMed pipeline — a €6 billion project that was meant to ship gas from deposits offshore Israel and Egypt through a 1,250-kilometer pipeline running via Cyprus and Greece to European markets — is for all intents and purposes dead after the U.S. pulled support for it.
The problem was that the project would exclude Turkey — the most obvious route for a Mediterranean pipeline — and it’s also an increasingly difficult sell at a time when the EU is aiming to become climate neutral by 2050.
In a paper sent to Greece earlier this month, Washington cited environmental reasons for its decision to no longer support energy projects that are not green, the lack of the project’s economic and commercial viability, but also the fact that the project creates tensions in the region, according to officials.
“We remain committed to physically interconnecting EastMed energy to Europe,” a State Department spokesperson said, adding that the U.S. is shifting its focus to electricity interconnectors that can support both gas and renewable energy sources, like an electricity link between Greece and Egypt.
The pipeline was tied to long-running tensions between Cyprus, Greece and Turkey over maritime borders and exploration for offshore oil and gas; Turkey has riled Cyprus and the EU by drilling for gas around Cyprus in areas it claims to belong to either Turkish Cypriots or Turkey’s continental shelf and also signed a delimitation agreement with Libya, which Greece and Cyprus consider a sea grab.
The project was backed by the Trump administration and ex-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — but both the U.S. and Israel have new governments less enthusiastic about the idea.
“The demise of the EastMed pipeline will remove a major cause for tensions in the region, as there will be one less area where Turkey feels boxed in by regional developments,” said Emre Peker, a Turkey and EU expert at risk analysis firm Eurasia Group.
“While the gas link was always more a political pipe dream than a realistic project, it nevertheless contributed to instability by provoking Ankara’s anger. Without it, Ankara will be more inclined to maintain the shaky detente in the region,” he said.
The pipeline retreat is being welcomed by Ankara.
“If [Israeli gas] would be brought to Europe, it could only be done through Turkey,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told journalists, according to a transcript released by the presidency on Tuesday. “Is there any hope for now? We can sit and talk about the conditions.”
Faiz Sucuoğlu, the prime minister of the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north of the island, called the project “folly” and welcomed its demise.
The pipeline was broadly supported by all political groupings in Greece, and the U.S. change of policy is seen as a reward for Turkey’s hardball position. It also comes as Washington is trying to improve relations with Ankara thanks to rising tensions with Russia.
“From Turkey’s perspective, it is very reasonable to believe that it is a diplomatic victory, achieved by using methods that all regional and other players condemned,” said Constantinos Filis, director of the institute of global affairs and professor of international relations at the American College of Greece. “What is most worrying is that Turkey could understand that what the U.S. is effectively saying is that you can destabilize the area and be blamed for that, but at the end of the day we take it into account and make a decision that satisfies you.”
Even in Cyprus, at the sharp edge of confrontations with Turkey, the American move was greeted with mixed signals.
Newly appointed Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides told local radio he “always considered EastMed as a tool for creating problems.”
But Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades said those were Kasoulides’ personal views. “It is sad that some people are happy because the execution of the project has been supposedly cancelled,” Anastasiades said in a written statement.
The EastMed pipeline was set to be one of the longest and deepest underwater pipelines in the world, capable of carrying between 9 billion and 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually — some 10 percent of Europe’s supply, which would help reduce the EU’s dependence on Russian gas.
But it had been dogged with complications since the get-go, raising doubts as to whether it made financial and technical sense. Italy, where the pipeline was supposed to land, was never officially on board.
Last year, officials from Israel and Greece said they were weighing plans to reroute the EastMed pipeline to bypass Cyprus and flow through Egypt. Egypt and Israel also signed an agreement to transport Israeli gas, which undermined the case for EastMed.
“The construction or not of the EastMed pipeline does not impact the transportation of gas reserves to Europe, because the Egypt option seems more efficient and viable,” said George Tzogopoulos, a senior research fellow at the International Center for European Studies, a French think tank.
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