The Russian invasion of Ukraine led Europe to move away from the current energy mix as quickly as possible. One of the priorities of the EU Repower EU project is the Diversification of gas supplies and working with international partners to move away from Russian gas, investing in the necessary infrastructure concerning gas sources that have already been discovered and are geographically close to the European market
The EastMed pipeline is a €6 billion project for the shipment of gas from offshore deposits in Israel and Egypt through a 1,250-kilometer pipeline running via Cyprus and Greece to European markets. It will reach depths of 3km, and have a capacity of 10 billion cubic meters per year.
The project, which will take 4 years to complete, concerns the construction of offshore and onshore pipelines for the transport of natural gas from the offshore fields of Leviathan & Aphrodite in the Eastern Mediterranean to Greece, as well as to Italy and other European regions through the existing pipelines IGI Poseidon and IGB Project (Gas Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria) with the aim of enhancing Europe's energy security.
In January 2022, the United States announced withdrawal of support as the project is not seen as economically viable or environmentally friendly, meaning the project is likely to be cancelled.
Contributing to the implementation of the project and in contrast to the above announcement, is the recent statement of Michael Wirth (CEO Chevron Corporation) at the CERAWeek energy conference (7 - 11 March 2022) in Houston, USA, who stressed that the project EastMed should be seen as a useful route to supply Europe with new gas.
According to recent statements by N. Monti (EDISON CEO) "it is a sustainable and competitive project today and can be implemented within four years once all the conditions are met in terms of funding and policy" and noted that "four years is a reasonably short period of time, given that we will need gas for many more years, certainly for an economic cycle that will then lead us to the horizon of decarbonization by 2050".
One crucial fact should also be taken into account that in the gas transportation sector, pipelines can be retrofitted to transport blends of hydrogen and methane in the short to medium term. In the long term, these pipelines can also be fully repurposed to transport pure hydrogen once supply and demand increase.