Jordan to buy $15bn of Israeli gas

A memorandum of understanding is due to be signed between Israel and Jordan in the reservoir of Leviathan to export Israeli natural gas to Jordan during the next 15 years with a total value of $15 billion, an Israeli newspaper reported yesterday.

Israel’s financial newspaper Globes said that the agreement is a positive, radical change in the Israeli-Jordanian economic relations, which will open the door to positive cooperation deals.

So far, no official statement has been issued by the Jordanian government about the agreement.

Jordan has suffered from a deficit in energy following the decline in the supply of Egyptian natural gas to very low levels over the past months, prompting the authorities in Amman to raise the prices of energy services and to restrict the selling of some of the hardware devices according to their daily consumption.

The Jordanian cabinet approved, last month, the recommendation of the Committee on Economic Development, calling for supplying Jordan with natural gas from the gas field discovered in the Palestinian water of the Gaza Marine, after coordination with the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinians own a stake in the Gaza Marine field, located 35 kilometres away from the coast of the Gaza Strip, which was discovered at the end of the 90s, nothing has been extracted from it yet.