An oil pipeline running from Eilat to Ashkelon will be extended to the UAE, providing the Emirates with a bridge to get fossil fuel directly to Europe.
The memorandum of understanding is between the state-owned Europe-Asia Pipeline Co., formerly the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Co., and a company called MED-RED Land Bridge, which is a joint venture between Israelis and Emiratis, according to an announcement.
It was signed in Abu Dhabi with US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and other US and UAE officials present, meaning it would have taken place shortly before they flew to Israel.
Hisham Abd Ahmid Ahmid, Vice Chairman National Holding and Itzik Levy, EAPC CEO sign a pipeline agreement on October 20, 2020. (Courtesy: EAPC)
EAPC says in a statement that the collaboration is significant news for the global energy market, since it offers oil producers and refiners the shortest most efficient and cost-effective route to transport oil and oil products from the Arabian Gulf to the consumption centers in the West, and provides access for consumers in the Far East to oil produced in the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions.
EAPC was originally formed in 1968 to ferry Iranian oil to Israel. It has continued to operate since that spigot was shut and in 2014 was responsible for the worst oil spill in the nation’s history.
View of the oil leak from a pipe of the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company in the Arava area of South Israel, which caused Israel’s biggest environmental disaster, on December 9, 2014. (Marc Israel Sellem/Jerusalem Post/POOL)
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