The greatest beneficiary of a failure in Geneva would be Russia and its efforts to further expand its widening strategic footprint in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Israel hopes to market its natural gas to Turkey, and via Turkey to the EU, but this aim may hang on the outcome of the potentially historic Cypriot peace negotiations currently underway in Geneva.
Following the cancellation of South Stream, Russia announced its plans to reroute the pipeline to Turkey, instead of Bulgaria. The new pipeline was dubbed “Turkish Stream”, with same capacity of South Stream, but less vulnerable to EU competition law. “Turkish Stream” has also experienced delays due to the crisis in Russia-Turkey relations.
Over the course of the nearly six months since Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced their agreement on normalization of bilateral relations, it has become increasingly likely that the factor that clinched the deal was prospective cooperation on energy. That being said, should Israel proceed with a pipeline to bring its gas to Turkey, it faces the possibility of deterioration in its increasingly important relations with Greece and Cyprus, as well as Greek-Americans.
Turkey-Israel: A peace pipeline on the way?
Energy cooperation has been a major force driving Turkish-Israeli reconciliation.
Israel’s Leviathan gas field, the country’s largest natural gas reservoir, was discovered in 2010 and is believed to hold 621 billion cubic meters of gas.
OPEC countries have an agreement on production, but will they abide by it?
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) says its members have approved a plan to cut oil production by about 1.2 million barrels per day, or roughly 1.5 percent of current global crude production.