While Europe Goes Green ...

A new deal by Russia’s Gazprom energy giant to market Israeli liquefied natural gas puts Moscow firmly in the burgeoning and contentious east Mediterranean energy sector, and shows that it’s again emerging as a player in the strategic region. The deal, signed Feb. 26, is a direct consequence of a ground-breaking visit to Israel, the United States’ most valuable strategic ally in the region, by Russian President Vladimir Putin last June. With U.S. interest in the Middle East seemingly diminishing, in part because of vast shale oil and natural gas deposits that lessen dependence on Persian Gulf oil, Putin clearly has ambitions of filling the vacuum. --UPI, 9 March 2013

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The entire eastern Mediterranean is swimming in huge untapped oil and gas reserves. That discovery is having enormous political, geopolitical as well as economic consequences. It well may have potential military consequences too. Tulane University oil expert David Hynes told an audience in Athens recently that Greece could potentially solve its entire public debt crisis through development of its new-found gas and oil. He conservatively estimates that exploitation of the reserves already discovered could bring the country more than €302 billion over 25 years. --F. William Engdahl, Global Research, 3 March 2012 Unnoticed or unspoken, the geopolitics of energy has been transforming. The president in the White House, Barack Obama, has not wasted his breath over the Caspian energy rivalries. He has no special romance with Big Oil, unlike his predecessor in the Oval Office. The Bill Clinton era in the geopolitics of Caspian energy, which ran through the George W Bush presidency, imbued with a great sense of rivalry over Russia's status as an energy powerhouse, is giving way. That is one of the messages to be pulled out from the announcement on Tuesday in Moscow that a subsidiary of the Russian energy giant Gazprom has signed a 20-year deal with Levant LNG Marketing Corp. for Israel's Tamar offshore gas field in the Mediterranean. --M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times, 28 February 2013 Post-Soviet Russia's "de-ideologized return" to the Middle East in a matrix where all that is permanent are its interests and all else is ephemeral and negotiable is beginning to show results as the Tamar deal dramatically testifies. After all, it is no small matter to foster friendships with Israel on the one hand and Iran, Syria and Lebanon on the other, with Cyprus and Greece on the one hand and Turkey on the other - and make almost all of them feel special about their Russia connection. --M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times, 28 February 2013

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