Eastern Mediterranean Gas: Accelerating Peace?
Channel: International Crisis Group
Date: 2023-06-05

Join this online event on Monday, 5 June at 4pm Beirut / 3pm Brussels / 9am New York, where Crisis Group’s experts and external speakers will discuss the extent to which hydrocarbons have shaped conflict dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean and the prospects for effective gas diplomacy.

Gas discoveries in the eastern Mediterranean raised hopes that shared interests in the region’s hydrocarbon wealth could help reshape the geopolitics of a region that has long been beset by conflict and political disputes. But twenty years on, a recently published Crisis Group report, Rethinking Gas Diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean, shows that the picture is mixed. Gas deals have improved relations between Israel and some of its neighbours while allowing them to also reap economic benefits. Yet gas finds have intensified competition between Turkey, on the one hand, and the Republic of Cyprus, Greece and Egypt, on the other, and they have done little to ease tensions between Israel and Lebanon. To Palestinians, offshore gas reserves have offered neither economic nor political payoffs.

Panellists: 
Nigar Göksel, Crisis Group Türkiye Project Director
Joost Hiltermann, Crisis Group MENA Program Director
Lapo Pistelli, ENI Director of Public Affairs
Mona Sukkarieh, Political Risk Consultant

Moderator: Claudia Gazzini, Crisis Group Senior Libya Analyst