Headlines:
- Major Gas Find for Egypt
- Middle East Faces Water Shortages
- ‘Use AQ Fighters to Beat ISIS’
Major Gas find for Egypt
The Italian energy group Eni reported it has discovered the largest known gas field in the Mediterranean off the Egyptian coast. The Zohr field, covers an area of about 60 square miles (100sq km), and could hold as much as 30tn cubic feet of gas. “Zohr is the largest gas discovery ever made in Egypt and in the Mediterranean Sea and could become one of the world’s largest natural-gas finds,” said ENI in a statement. Eni, is 30% state-owned, is the biggest foreign oil and gas producer in Africa, where it has significant operations in Libya. In 2011, it made huge finds off Mozambique, with an estimated 85tn cubic feet of gas in place. It has operated for more than 60 years in Egypt and is one of the main energy producers in the country, with a daily output of 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent. In June, it signed an energy exploration deal with Cairo worth $2 billion, allowing it to explore in Sinai, the Gulf of Suez, the Mediterranean and the Nile delta. Egypt, once exported gas to Israel and elsewhere, but has become a net energy importer over the past few years. Under Sisi, Egypt’s state-owned gas company Egas has increasingly rationed supplies to much of the country’s industry. But the Sisi government has now slashed state subsidies, paying down its debt to foreign energy firms and negotiating import agreements.
Middle East Faces Water Shortages
A new analysis from the World Resources Institute (WRI) has concluded that water supplies across the Middle East will deteriorate over 25 years, threatening the regional economies, national security and forcing more people to move to already overcrowded cities. As the region, which is home to over 350 million people, begins to recover from a series of deadly heatwaves which have seen temperatures rise to record levels for weeks at a time. The report also claims water is not a key weapon in the Syrian region. New WRI rankings place 14 of the world’s 33 most water-stressed countries in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA), including Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Palestine, Jewish entity, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iran and Lebanon. Companies, farms and residents in these countries are all highly vulnerable to the slightest change in supplies, says the WRI. Middle East water supplies depend heavily on underground aquifers, but these are drying out at alarming rates. The International Institute for Sustainable Development has estimated that the Jordan River may shrink by 80% by 2100 and that ground water supplies will deteriorate further as demand increases. Nonrenewable aquifers are the major source of water in Saudi Arabia. The Middle East is already prone to water conflict and is likely to remain so, says the report. “Water is a significant dimension of the decades-old conflict between Palestine and the Jewish entity.
‘Use AQ Fighters to Beat ISIS’
Retired Army General and former CIA Director David Petraeus has advocated using members of AQ to fight ISIS. Petraeus who was a four star general who led the US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan utilised a similar strategy in Iraq in 2007 when as part of a broader strategy to defeat an Islamist insurgency the U.S. persuaded Sunni militias to stop fighting with al Qaeda and to work with the American military. The strategy only worked temporarily and was the catalyst for ISIS in the end. Christopher Harmer, a senior naval analyst with the Middle East Security Project at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War, told The Daily Beast: “This is an acknowledgment that US stated goal to degrade and destroy ISIS is not working. If it were, we would not be talking to these not quite foreign terrorist groups. Strategically, it is desperate.”
Such talk takes place as US efforts to train local forces in Syria have faltered. The first batch of 54 fighters trained by American military forces dissolved earlier this month. Some fighters fled back to their homes in Syria. Others were captured by al Nusra. While the US military has said it’s still training fighters, privately officials concede the group has fallen far short of expectations.