Jordan to buy $500m of gas from Israel

From Reuters:

The partners in the Tamar natural gas field off Israel's Mediterranean coast have signed a deal to sell at least $500 million of gas over 15 years to two Jordanian companies in the first deal outside of Israel.

Under the agreement, Tamar will supply 66 billion cubic feet to Arab Potash and its unit, Jordan Bromine - a joint venture with U.S. Albemarle - at their facilities near the Dead Sea, Noble Energy said on Wednesday.

Jordan is hungry for gas amid numerous attacks on a pipeline in the Sinai peninsula that has halted supplies from Egypt.

Tamar, discovered in 2009, is estimated to hold more than 280 billion cubic metres of gas. It began production last March and has already signed a number of lucrative deals in Israel.

The field came on line months after Egypt halted gas supplies to Israel.

After a lengthy and heated debate, the government last year decided to allow 40 percent of its natural gas reserves for export. It is using gas as an opportunity to improve relations with its neighbours including Jordan. It is also thought Israel could ultimately sell gas to Turkey, although ties between the two countries have been frosty over the last few years.

The nearby and much larger Leviathan field last month signed a 20-year, $1.2 billion deal to supply gas to planned a Palestinian power plant once Leviathan starts production in 2016 or 2017. Leviathan is estimated to hold some 540 billion cubic metres of gas, enough to supply Europe for a year.

Tamar and Leviathan were the two of the largest gas finds in the past decade and overnight turned Israel into a gas exporter.

The JordanZad newspaper says that the gas is coming from "the occupied territories."

Jordan has an active "anti-normalization" group so it will be interesting to see what kind of resistance, if any, comes from Jordanian citizens.

In the end, as we've seen with BDS, even the biggest anti-Israel idiots aren't willing to inconvenience themselves for a bogus "principle"  - although they hypocritically insist that others do so.