Energean, the Green energy company that is developing Israel’s offshore Karish and Tanin oil fields, is negotiating with the Palestinian Authority to develop fields offshore the Gaza Strip, sources in the local energy industry told TheMarker on Sunday.

The sources said that the discussions have revolved around the commercial aspects of Energean’s taking over development of the fields after Royal Dutch Shell said in March it was giving up its stake in the undeveloped license.

Energean declined to comment. “Developing Karish and exploring the blocks adjacent to it are our highest priorities. We avoid commenting on rumors concerning our operations and when there is something to announce we will do so officially,” the company said.

Located about 30 kilometers off the Gaza coast, Gaza Marine has long been seen as a golden opportunity for the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority to join the Mediterranean gas bonanza, providing a major source of income to reduce its reliance on foreign aid.

However, no work advanced on the field amid repeated wars with Israel, the blockade and ongoing rivalry between Hamas and the PA over control of Gaza. Shell had been struggling to find a buyer for its 55% stake in Gaza Marine, which it took over as part of its acquisition of BG Group in 2016.

With Shell’s exit, the Palestine Investment Fund, a sovereign wealth fund, remains the sole shareholder. The field is estimated to hold over 30 to 35 billion cubic meters of natural gas, the equivalent of Spain’s consumption in 2016.

Israel’s Energy Ministry has reportedly been kept abreast of the talks, but refused on Sunday to comment on them. Any development of the field would require Israel’s approval, but at least one official said that Israel would benefit economically from it.

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“The matter has been under discussion in the government for a long time. If they develop the Palestinian reservoir and it’s connected to Israel it would create competition for Tamar,” said one source, referring to Israel’s single gas field now in operation, a monopoly that has been the source of chronic controversy.

“It would also reduce the burden on Israel Electric Corporation, which today is supplying power to Gaza,” said the source, who asked not to be named. “It’s a small field, but the Gaza power plant has minimal needs. So whoever develops [Gaza Marine] will also want to sell Gaza gas to Israel.”

The source said that converting electricity generation to clean natural gas would also reduce air pollution in Gaza and ensure a more reliable energy supply to the enclave, which now gets only a few hours of power daily.

The only problem – and the source said it could be a fatal one – is that the PA would be entitled to royalties from the gas.

Although Gaza Marine is small, the gas doesn’t lie deep beneath the seabed and development could probably be completed within three years.

With reporting by Reuters.</s>The Greek energy company Energean is discussing with the Palestinian Authority the development of natural gas fields offshore near the Gaza Strip, including Gaza Marine, according to the Jewish business newspaper TheMarker.

Energean, which is currently developing Israel's offshore Karish and Tanin oil fields, declined to comment, saying that "developing Karish and exploring the blocks adjacent to it are our highest priorities."

READ MORE: IMF Calculates Damage to Palestine's Economy Caused by Geopolitical Tensions

TheMarker cited sources as saying that Israel's Energy Ministry is keeping a watchful eye on the Energean-Palestine talks and that Israel may economically capitalize on all this.

"The matter has been under discussion in the government for a long time. If they develop the Palestinian reservoir and it's connected to Israel it would create competition for Tamar [Israel's single gas field currently in operation]," one of the sources said.

The sovereign Palestine Investment Fund remains the sole shareholder of the Gaza Marine field after Royal Dutch Shell said that it was giving up its 55-percent stake in the project in March 2018.

Gaza Marine is located 36 kilometers (22 miles) off the Gaza Strip at a depth of 610 meter (2,000 feet). The field is thought to contain between 30 and 35 billion cubic meters of natural gas, which is tantamount to Spain's consumption in 2016.</s>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israel is confident a second auction to sell rights to develop offshore natural gas will be more successful than its first because some Arab countries have shown they are open to importing the fuel, the country’s energy minister said in an interview on Tuesday.

Israel, which discovered it has large reserves of natural gas offshore in 2009, will hold a second auction in October or November, offering about 20 or 25 blocks in the Mediterranean.

The first auction, held last year, only got bids from two companies as some oil majors were concerned about a backlash from oil-rich Arab states hostile to the country.

But Egypt agreed early this year to buy $15 billion in Israeli gas and Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s energy minister, is confident that sale, and another one to Jordan, will help the auction get more attention this year.

Egypt and Jordan are the only two Arab countries that have treaties with Israel. Though powerful Sunni Gulf Countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates do not recognize Israel, the U.S. allies do have a shared concern over Iranian influence in the region.

“I think companies were skeptics about the exporting possibilities” of Israel, Steinitz told Reuters in an interview. “Things are different now.”

In March, the partners in Israel’s offshore natural gas field Leviathan, its largest, said that all conditions have been met to allow the supply of gas to Jordan’s power generating company. In 2016 Leviathan’s partners signed a 15-year, $10 billion deal to supply gas to Jordan, subject to conditions and approvals.

Steinitz met with five energy companies this week, in part to spark interest in the auction, including Exxon Mobil, France’s Total, and Australia’s Woodside Energy, on the sidelines of the World Gas Conference held in Washington.

Israel could offer incentives for companies interested in developing its offshore gas, Steinitz said.

Companies developing small to mid-size fields would face no export limits, he said. Companies developing larger fields would have some export limits but those would be “very minimal, almost insignificant,” he said.

In addition, some companies would not necessarily have to link up with the Israeli natural gas transmission system and would have the option to pipe gas to Cyprus or Egypt or build a floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) platform, he said.

Israel has many plans for its gas abundance. It hopes to sell more to Egypt where the fuel could be converted to LNG for export, and to build pipelines, one to Jordan, where gas could be sent to India and avoid the Suez Canal, and other to Europe.

Israel and Lebanon, meanwhile, have been struggling to overcome a dispute over exploration in the eastern Mediterranean. The U.S. government has been trying to help resolve the disagreement by participating in back-channel talks. Steinitz said there were new ideas on how to solve the issue, but did not reveal them. Israel would like to help bring an end to the problem, but it is more urgent for Lebanon because the gas would help its economy, he said.</s>MELBOURNE, June 25 — Private equity firms are expected to drive a wave of merger activity in Australia’s gas sector, hunting for bargains amid soaring demand in China, rising domestic prices and a broader oil market recovery.

The energy sector has dominated Australian M&A activity over the past 12 months, led by a spurned US$10.8 billion (RM43.1 billion) bid for oil and gas producer Santos and a US$9.8 billion bid for pipeline operator APA Group by Hong Kong’s CK Infrastructure.

Still, the share prices of smaller companies in the sector have yet to fully reflect the sharp recovery in oil markets over the past year and gains from lower drilling costs, say bankers and consultants.

“Private equity firms clearly see strong turnaround opportunities in the oil and gas sector. Stocks are trading below their earnings potential with serious upside,” said Perth-based Deloitte Consulting partner Bernadette Cullinane.

US firm Harbour Energy pursued Santos for a year before its bid ended in acrimony, while private equity fund Lone Star bid A$530 million (RM1.57 billion) in March for Australia’s Sino Gas & Energy Holdings, which has stakes in two shale gas projects in China.

More deals are seen as small oil and gas companies look to fund new gas developments to feed the east coast market and bigger companies, like Santos, look to replenish their reserves, following years of cuts in exploration.

“Most of the sub-billion market cap companies with reasonable 2P resources and cash flow or near term cashflow would be attractive to private equity funds,” said Eddie Rigg, head of corporate finance at Argonaut, who advised a private Chinese firm that lost out in a three-way bidding war for gas producer AWE Ltd in February.

Rigg predicted Sino Gas will attract a rival bid from a US, European or Asian group as most of the geological and well engineering risks on its project have been dealt with.

“It’s a reasonably safe entry into a growing gas market,” he said.

Australian domestic gas prices have more than doubled in the past three years as east coast supply has been sucked into exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to feed Asia-Pacific demand.

China’s LNG imports, driven by a clean air push, are expected to jump 50 per cent over three years to 57 million tonnes by 2020, according to Australian government forecasts. For investors, Australia is handy way to play into that growth.

“Australia’s attractiveness as an oil and gas M&A and investment proposition is driven primarily by its low geopolitical and sovereign risk ... and of course its proximity to Asia’s energy demand centres,” said Deloitte’s Cullinane.

The next likely target is in Australia’s west. Gas supplier Quadrant Energy, potentially worth A$3 billion, is attracting interest as one of its two owners, Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management, is looking to sell its stake, bankers say.

Quadrant, co-owned by Macquarie Group, produces more than a fifth of the gas going into the domestic market in the state of Western Australia, has oil production and untapped gas reserves.

The appeal for Santos is that it knows the Quadrant business well as the companies share stakes in a number of gas fields, bankers and analysts say, although Santos may not want to risk alienating shareholders by splashing out on a deal so soon after having rejected a takeover.

“Quadrant’s domestic business in Western Australia is a prized cash cow in Santos’ portfolio. Doubling down there makes sense,” said Wood Mackenzie analyst Saul Kavonic.

Within the next two years, there could be other deals on the west coast, where Woodside Petroleum and Chevron Corp are looking to develop new gas fields to feed their LNG plants.

The biggest hurdle to their plans is the myriad of co-owners in their gas fields and LNG plants — all with competing priorities — making it difficult to agree on development plans.

The best way to overcome that hurdle, analysts and bankers say, would be for Woodside or Chevron to buy out some of their partners, as Woodside did in February with the US$744 million purchase of ExxonMobil’s stake in the Scarborough gas field.

“Obviously if an interest owner in a particular part of the value chain no longer desires to participate, Chevron or other companies are always looking for opportunities to improve their portfolio,” Chevron’s Asia-Pacific exploration and production president Stephen Green said in a recent group interview. — Reuters</s>JERUSALEM, Israel – Recently released information refutes Hamas' claim that a baby girl died of tear gas inhalation at last month's riots near the Israeli border.

The Palestinian Health Ministry included the eight-month-old infant on its list of fatalities during the May 14 demonstrations. According to a Times of Israel report, some people within Gaza's health system were skeptical of the tear gas story.

Now Israel reports that Mahmoud Omar, a 20-year-old member of Fatah's "armed wing," the al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigades, arrested while trying to infiltrate Israel, told interrogators that Hamas Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar paid the baby's relatives to lie about the cause of her death.

It turned out the arrestee, now indicted, is a cousin of Leila Ghandour, the baby who reportedly succumbed to tear gas fired by IDF soldiers to keep demonstrators away from the security fence.

The news of her death went "viral."

During interrogation, Omar said he'd taken part in the border demonstrations that day. He left after learning that his baby cousin had died. When he got home, he found out she died from the same blood disease that killed her infant brother a year earlier.

At the time of her death, the IDF also questioned the report, with an IDF spokesperson saying Israel had evidence that undermined health ministry's claim.

During interrogation, the baby's cousin also confessed he'd been offered payment for his family if he joined the brigades' Mujahideen unit, Fatah's "military wing," which is on both the US and UK terror lists. It's a variation sof the pay-to-slay ideology embraced by both Palestinian factions – Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Fatah in Ramallah.</s>For years Israel spared no effort to end rocket smuggling into the besieged Gaza Strip, while creating a sophisticated anti-missile system to intercept those that ended up in Hamas's hands.

But its formidable army is scrambling for a response to new Palestinian weapons that cost pennies to make: flaming kites and helium inflated condoms sent over the fortified border to torch Israeli farmlands.

Israel calls them "terror kites." Hundreds have been launched in recent months, burning thousands of acres of farmland.

The "kite war” now threatens to start a real war neither side wants. Gaza Palestinians have always been fond of kites.

A few years ago they set a record by flying more than 13,000 of them simultaneously.

There is perhaps something aspirational about the aerial toys for a people that controls neither its sea, air, nor border crossings.

Using them as flame delivery systems, however, was a byproduct of protests since March at Gaza's border in which Israeli troops killed dozens of Palestinians as some tried to breach the fence.
Greek offshore gas extraction firm Energean, which is already developing gas fields off Israel, is revealed to be contemplating an initial public offering to raise US$1.5 billion in order to develop Gaza Marine, a gas deposit off Gaza. Shell, who own a 55% stake in Gaza Marine, have been attempting to sell their share as ongoing conflict prevents production.