TheEconomistAugust 22nd 2020 491A
s naval battlesgo, it was not a classic.
The Kemal Reis, a Turkish frigate
named after a 15th-century Ottoman admi-
ral who tormented the Venetian fleet, was
one of five escorts sent to protect the Oruc
Reis, an exploration ship designed to hunt
for undersea oil and gas. The Limnos, an el-
derly Greek frigate charged with protecting
Greece’s Exclusive Economic Zone (eez)
from such predations, watched warily
from a distance. On August 12th they collid-
ed after a clumsy manoeuvre.
Both governments tried to keep the in-
cident under wraps, but Greek navy offi-
cials soon leaked details to local news web-
sites. “We have fewer and older ships, but
we protected Greece’s maritime rights,”
boasted one veteran naval officer. Greece’s
defence minister is said to have congratu-
lated the captain of the Limnos. “If this goes
on, we will retaliate,” thundered Recep Tay-
yip Erdogan, Turkey’s president. “We shall
not leave either the dead or the living of our
kin alone.” After a call to Kyriakos Mitsota-
kis, the Greek prime minister, Emmanuel
Macron, France’s president, said that he
had decided to “temporarily reinforce”
France’s military presence in the region
with two fighter jets and a pair of warships
in order to “make sure that international
law is respected.”
Dust-ups between Greece and Turkey
are nothing new. The two countries came
to the brink of war in 1996 over disputed Ae-
gean islets, and continue to spar over them.
Greece complained that Turkish warplanes
ventured into its airspace over 3,000 times
in 2017. They also disagree over the status
of Cyprus, split into two after a Turkish in-
vasion in 1974. The current dispute, how-
ever, is part of a larger tapestry of growing
tensions in the eastern Mediterranean over
energy, security and ideology. Turkey finds
itself pitted against a broad coalition of
European and Middle Eastern rivals in bat-
tlegrounds stretching from Libya to Syria.
On the face of it, the latest skirmish is all
about energy. Ten years ago Israel, the most
energy-starved country in the Middle East,
announced it had a huge hydrocarbon re-
source, after all. Tucked beneath 1,645 me-
tres of sea were some 450 billion cubic me-tres (bcm) of recoverable gas reserves, in a
field presciently named Leviathan. Israeli
officials dubbed it the best energy news in
the country’s history.
The decade since has seen another
boom. In 2015 Eni, an Italian oil-and-gas
giant, discovered the huge Zohr field off
Egypt’s coast. Big gasfields have been found
near Cyprus, too, their names borrowed
from Ovid or Homer: Glaucus (ExxonMobil
and Qatar Petroleum), Aphrodite (Noble
Energy, Royal Dutch Shell and Delek Drill-
ing) and Calypso (Eni and Total). Together
Egypt, Israel and Cyprus have 2.3tcm of gas,
reckons Rystad Energy, a Norwegian re-
search firm, with the potential for a lot
more. Optimists claim that such riches
may not only enhance the local supply of
natural gas, but foster new co-operation in
a fractious region and, via an ambitious
pipeline, bolster energy security in Europe.
Some of these lofty aspirations have been
realised. Others remain the stuff of myth.
Many countries in the region are suc-
cessfully exploiting hydrocarbons without
provoking their neighbours. Zohr and Le-
viathan have become important suppliers
of gas to their domestic markets. Egypt has
become a hub for foreign investment. Eni’s
swift development of Zohr brought other
big oil and gas companies to Egypt, lured by
geology, favourable regulations and a large,
growing domestic market for gas. It helps
that Egypt is also home to two large lique-
fied natural gas (lng) facilities, which can
accept gas by pipeline and turn it into lngTension in the eastern Mediterranean
Battling over boundaries
ATHENS, ISTANBUL AND PARIS
A quarrel between Turkey and Greece ostensibly over gas highlights hostilities in
the region and beyond
International