Gazprom Seeks Israeli Gas

Russia's Gazprom announced this week that its Swiss-based subsidiary Gazprom Marketing and Trading, created just last year, has signed a letter of intent with the consortium exploiting the Tamar offshore Israeli natural gas deposit to begin talks for marketing gas from Tamar and another offshore field, most probably Dalit.

Tamar is estimated to contain 265 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas. Gazprom has also expressed an interest in the offshore Leviathan deposit. It is being developed by Israel's Delek Group, and is estimated to hold 700 bcm of gas in addition to 4.2 billion barrels of oil.

Gazprom would purchase the liquefied natural gas (LNG) from a company that the Israeli consortium would create, Russian business newspaper Vzglyad reported. Gazprom's interest is principally to keep Israeli natural gas out of the European markets, where Russia is the principal foreign supplier.

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