Middle East & Africa May 2019

Gas production at Israel’s Tamar field was briefly shut down in May, highlighting rising geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

Tamar is currently Israel’s only gas-producing acreage, and this was the first time the government took the decision to completely stop output from the field because of security concerns. The outage lasted for 24 hours. Meanwhile, on 5 May the country’s energy ministry declared a state of emergency for the gas sector. Israel’s security services perceived a credible threat to Tamar’s production platform because of rockets...