Aspects of Hydrocarbon Insecurity in the Eastern Mediterranean: Maritime Claims, Access, and Quest for Energy Resources

Mapping Current Security Challenges in the Eastern Mediterranean

Conflicts of today are to a large extent moving targets of great complexity.¹⁴ In the post-WWII order, the United Nations (UN) has been the main vehicle to disseminate the ideals and principles of the Westphalian model characterized by supremacy of sovereign nation states, jurisdiction over particular physical territory with non-permeable borders and collective security throughout the world. Since 1990s, emerging non-state actors as instruments of internal and transnational violence in unstable, contagious regional wars have challenged the established order of Westphalia, unveiling limits of the current world order, and shifted focus of international security to intrastate “warfare amongst people”. When the current structure of the UN Security Council (UNSC) is incapable of preventing, controlling, or adequately responding to political upheaval and violence without the required approval of its controlling members, states with perceived power asymmetry will continue to act unilaterally in an attempt to promote their own security¹⁵ against increasingly heterogeneous threats.¹⁶

As a consequence of these institutional challenges, the lack of a joint, decisive action to solve crises increasingly draws regional actors such as Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Israel, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries into armed conflicts in various capacities. These national actors, in addition to the global powers of the U.S., Russia, and China, are inclined to further their political interests by using proxy war as a tool to achieve strategic outcomes. Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon came to support the Assad regime; ISIS terrorized the region with ideological, violent extremism that transcends borders, and PKK/YPG found an opportunity to capitalize on the turmoil in a power vacuum and legitimized itself by carving an enclave along a contiguous belt in northern Syria. The breakup of Iraq and Syria into micro-spheres of influence emboldened belligerent non-state armed groups and posed a major risk to the resilience, co-existence, and tolerance among various ethnicities, tribes, and sects. The extent to which the UNSC can absorb and regulate these developments is uncertain.

3.1. Middle Eastern Conflicts

Resources scarcity correlates with the rise of multilayered conflicts. Location especially matters even more in the case of energy whereby the quest for access to resources in the Middle East is inextricably linked to its geography. Iran’s “Shia Crescent” land corridor from Tehran to Beirut,¹⁷ a code term for its economic and strategic reach to the Mediterranean, competes with Israeli-backed Kurdish ambitions for independence and parallel energy pipeline routes through Syria to Haifa.¹⁸ Via its network of alliances from Hamas in Gaza to Houthis in Yemen, Iran’s sphere of influence extends from the Indian Ocean to Syria. Turkey, on the other hand, puts itself on the map as an important player in energy geopolitics, acting as a pipeline transit route, demonstrating its tactical maneuverability and keen interest to consolidate its influence and soft-power as an economic hub. Although Turkey and Iran have been regional rivals for decades and aim to restrain each another’s hegemonic ambitions, both have shared interests in herding stability, economic cooperation, and preventing formation of a belligerent Kurdish state at their door step.

3.2. Eastern Mediterranean Basin Conflicts

From Syria to Qatar, high seas have assumed ever greater defense significance in the face of changing regional dynamics, external interventions, and quest for access to scarce energy resources. Blended with the Middle East’s power dynamics, the Eastern Mediterranean has the greatest potential for controversy due to rich deposits of undersea hydrocarbons and a certain sense of disagreement on equitable distribution of these resources. This is demonstrated by presence of warships from many countries in the region, including China, Iran, Britain, France, and, of course, Russia.¹⁹ Cyprus occupies a pivotal geographic and economic position, heightened in importance by discovery of offshore oil and gas in the Levant basin, and Lebanon is exploring opportunities amid tremendous pressure posed by its war-torn neighborhood. Egypt, which historically had suffered from supply shortage due to expansion of gas-fired power generation capacity and strong growth in electricity demand,²⁰ has a fragile economy dependent on foreign aid, not helped by frequent terrorist attacks and disruptions to its energy infrastructure connecting to Israel and Jordan. Hamas, an off-shoot of Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, has been compelled by Israel, the West Bank, and Egypt, to shift its position, ease relations, and reconcile with Fatah in the Palestinian Authority,²¹ while Gaza’s maritime zones are under Israeli blockade on demands of political and security clearance as well as favorable terms of trade.²² Qatar, the main sponsor of Hamas, is under embargo by Egypt and three of its Gulf neighbors, which want the emirate to cut its ties with the Islamist movement.²³ Yet, Israel’s own off-shore gas fields are also within the range of Lebanese-Hezbollah missiles prompting pre-emptive airstrikes against arm depots and convoys in Southern Lebanon-Syria.

3.3. Exclusive Economic Zones and Conflicts on Maritime Delimitation

Against this backdrop, the discovery of offshore energy in Eastern Mediterranean Sea sparked a dispute over delimitation of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), due to a competition among littoral states over rights to exploit rich offshore energy resources and to exert political influence for furtherance of national interests. At the back of this challenge resides the fact that international extraction, storage, and transportation projects over sovereign areas of Turkey, Cyprus, Greece, Lebanon, Palestine, and Israel frequently compete to gain feasibility and security appraisals in finding the most cost-effective alternative energy supply route from the Middle East through to Europe. Since the viability and security of project realizations depend on the extent of a just and equitable resolution of the EEZ delimitation disputes, the situation has particularly underscored the crucial strategic position of Cyprus and heightened its importance within a broader power struggle involving global as well as regional players. In addition to potential windfall profits, a domestic factor amplifying the significance of new offshore gas exploitation is that Greek Cypriots have committed to cut carbon-intensive fuel-oil usage and CO² emissions in order to avoid carbon taxation measures.

3.4. Effects of European Gas Demand

Furthermore, the Arab Spring that began in 2011 emphasized the importance of natural gas and the power struggle over energy resources around the Fertile Crescent. The politically motivated unrest in the region coincided with an economic slowdown in Europe, creating diverging push and pull dimensions to inter-regional relationships²⁴ and further complicating negotiations surrounding the maritime delimitation dispute. Although difficulties remain to establish commercial viability of export production, successful offshore exploration activities may uncover higher quantities of gas in the coming years, as in the case of the giant Zohr field in Egypt’s EEZ, especially with the advent of shale revolution. This, coupled with the strategic location of the region between major producers of the Middle East and demand centers of Europe, makes the Eastern Mediterranean a frequent target of energy import and export project proposals²⁵ as well as a potential energy transit hub. Polarized by prolonged conflict, autocratic tendencies, and illegitimate sub-state actors, this complex environment actually presents a previously overlooked strategic opportunity for emergence of a sustainable and inclusive multilateral governance structure for Eastern Mediterranean states in the long run.

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