Middle East Eye: Palestinian Gas: The Black Box

Palestinians could claim 6,600 square kilometres of maritime territory - five times the amount they currently hold, an investigation by the Middle East Eye has revealed.

Stretching 200 miles (320 km) into the Mediterranean, the potential Palestinian claim goes through the heart of the Levantine Basin, which the US Energy Information Administration estimates holds six times more natural gas than the current reserves of adjacent countries.

MEE can reveal that one of the fields, Mari-B, which companies, granted with Israeli licenses, exploited and depleted in 2012, could fall squarely within the Palestinian claim. Mari-B contained 1.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas which is enough to supply Palestinians for at least 15 years.  

Instead, Houston-based Noble Energy and Israeli company Delek Group sold the gas to the state-run Israel Electric Company, which, in turn, sells Palestinians 85 percent of their electricity, according to the World Bank.

The sensitivity of the potential Palestinian claim is so great that no company or government involved is prepared to state the GPS co-ordinates of existing gas fields, nor the estimated amount of the gas underneath. A well-informed geological source told MEE that Israel has done extensive mapping of the area, but much of that information has not been made public. MORE