Chevron has announced the final investment decision regarding production expansion at the giant Leviathan gas field offshore Israel.
“Our decision to invest in the expansion of Leviathan’s production capacity reflects our confidence in the future of energy in the region,” said the president of Chevron Upstream, Clay Neff. “Pragmatic U.S. and regional energy policies are helping to strengthen energy security across the Eastern Mediterranean and foster an environment that encourages investment in the Middle East and globally.”
The Leviathan field, located in the Levant Basin, is Israel’s largest energy asset with 22.9 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas reserves. The field is an important supply source for Egypt, which has seen declining domestic gas production but has ambitions to become a regional LNG hub in the Mediterranean. Last year, Chevron and its partner in Leviathan, Israeli NewMed Energy, said they would further boost export capacity to Egypt to 2.2 billion cu m per day.
In its FID news release, Chevron said the expansion project will take about a decade to complete and will involve drilling three new wells, adding subsea infrastructure, and “enhancing the treatment facilities on the Leviathan production platform” to boost the field’s capacity to 21 billion cu m annually. That would be up from 12 billion cu m annually right now.
Reports about the expansion plans emerged last year, with NewMed Energy, the largest shareholder in the facility, saying the expansion would require an investment of about $2.4 billion. As an intermediate point of the expansion plan, NewMed Energy said the partners would aim to boost production from Leviathan to 14 billion cu m this year.
Besides Leviathan, Chevron is also the operator of another big Israeli offshore field, Tamar. Gas from Tamar is also exported to Egypt. Last year, Tel Aviv and Cairo sealed a long-term gas supply deal worth $35 billion.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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