The discovery of another marine natural gas reservoir, announced May 9 by British natural gas company Energean, underscores Israel’s emerging status over the past decade as a regional power in the field of natural gas. The country is capable of providing not only for its own needs, but for the needs of its neighbors as well, and even for other countries around the world.

The discovery in the Athena well led the company to go public about the near certainty that the Block 12 search zone contained nearly 60 billion cubic meters (bcm), or 1 cubic kilometer, of natural gas.

Shaul Zemach, country manager for Israel of Energean Oil and Gas, told Al-Monitor that the arrival of a new gas platform in Israel early this summer (it left Singapore last week) will ensure the viability of gas production in all of the company’s reservoir: Karish, Tanin and the current reservoir in Block 12. The idea is to place a pipeline that will run several dozen kilometers all along these reservoirs and going to the platform.

Data provided by the Ministry of Energy indicate that Israel’s proven gas reserves amount to 921 bcm before Energean’s recent discovery, while Israel’s maximum need for gas in the next 25 years will not exceed 500 bcm. Conservative estimates put the amount of extractable natural gas that has yet to be discovered at another 500 bcm for production. This means that Israel has about 900 bcm of natural gas that it can sell to the world. And who is the expected main consumer of Israel’s natural gas? Europe.