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"... Hence, Qatar’s gas field investment strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean merits attention. In January 2023, Qatar replaced a Russian company exploring for gas in one of Lebanon’s offshore fields. Last month, Qatar bought a 23 percent stake in an offshore Egyptian bloc from Chevron. Nor was Egypt’s offshore field alone as the target of Qatari investment. In the coming year, Qatar Energy is working with ExxonMobil to drill two new wells off the coast of Cyprus.
While Qatar distributes gas internationally and invests in a gas plant in Texas, the rapid expansion into the Eastern Mediterranean gas fields goes beyond supply and is at sharp dissonance with previous Qatari strategy. Nor does the gas market justify Qatar’s pivot to the Eastern Mediterranean. Instead, Qatar’s establishment of a significant presence in the Eastern Mediterranean suggests a geostrategic desire to establish a presence in an increasingly strategic region. Qatari gas development enables the Qatari government to insert ships, men, and equipment into a sensitive region under cover of business. Just as Hamas embezzled international funds and assistance to build Hamas’s multibillion-dollar underground webs of tunnels, regional terror groups could supply manpower or become recipients of sophisticated computers and machinery purchased under cover of gas development.
Qatar’s Eastern Mediterranean strategy also may involve Turkey. Turkey’s government long has promoted pipeline networks that would violate Cypriot territorial waters and cut off Israeli ambitions for pipeline connections to Greece and Cyprus. In time of conflict or tension, Qatar will be better able to spy on Israel and disrupt its actions. ..."
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