With Leviathan Noble turns Israel into gas exporter
In 2009, Israel’s exploration partner Noble Energy discovered the Tamar field in the Levantine Basin, some 50 miles west of Israel’s port of Haifa and with an estimated 8.3 tcf (trillion cubic feet) of highest-quality natural gas.
Tamar was the world’s largest gas discovery in 2009.
Then, just a year after Tamar, the same consortium led by Noble Energy struck the largest natural gas find in its decades-long history at Leviathan in the same Levantine geological basin.
The natural gas is in the first target strata, at a depth of 5,100 meters. 84 miles west of the port of Haifa
The 3D seismic survey also indicated the presence of 1.2 billion barrels of oil with an 8% chance of geological success in the third target strata, at a depth of 7,200 meters.
The Houston, Texas,USA based Noble Energy, revised Leviathan initial estimates from 16 to 21 trillion cubic feet of gas—making it the world’s biggest deep-water natural gas find in a decade.
To put the number in perspective, that one natural gas field, Leviathan, would hold enough reserves to supply Israel’s gas needs for 100 years.
Financial interest in Leviathan are shared between:
– Noble Energy 39.66%
– Delek Group units Avner Oil and Gas LP and Delek Drilling LP each own 22.67%
– Ratio Oil Exploration LP 15%.
With the Tamar and Leviathan discoveries, Israel is discussing how to become a major natural gas export nation, as well as whether to significantly tax gas and oil revenues and place them into an Israeli Sovereign Wealth Fund.
Noble studies fLNG on Leviathan, Tamar and Aphrodite
Tamar natural gas field is due for completion and operation to supply Israel in April 2013 with production capacity exceeding local gas consumption.
700 million cf/d natural gas will be carried out to Israel through subsea pipeline.
Then a part of Tamar gas field will need to be exported.
In parallel, Nobel Energy develops the Aphrodite gas field off shore Cyprus with again a part of this gas to be used locally in Cyprus and the remaining to be exported too.
With the giant Leviathan natural gas field lying right in between Tamar and Aphrodite, the floating liquified natural gas (fLNG) solutions seems to combine all advantages.
But with only $15 billion worth capitalization, Noble Energy needs to close deals with a partner bringing LNG expertise and financial resources to sustain long term capital expenditure with the objective to fast-track the project development, as completion is expected in 2016.
To develop all these natural gas fields, Noble has launched a pre-FEED with Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) while a Letter of Intent was signed between Gazprom Marketing & Trading (GM&T) Switzerland and Levant LNG Marketing Corporation, a company formed by DSME, D&H Solutions and Next Decade.
