Leaders of Greece, Israel, Cyprus in Athens to sign gas pipeline deal

The leaders of Greece, Israel and Cyprus were set to meet in Athens Thursday to sign a deal for an undersea pipeline that would carry gas from new offshore deposits in the southeastern Mediterranean to continental Europe.

The 1,900-kilometer (1,300-mile) EastMed pipeline is intended to provide an alternative gas source for energy-hungry Europe, which is currently largely dependent on supplies from Russia and the Caucasus region.

As now designed, the pipeline would run from Israel's Levantine Basin offshore gas reserves to Cyprus, Crete and the Greek mainland. An overland pipeline to northwestern Greece and another planned undersea pipeline would carry the gas to Italy.

The project, with a rough budget of $6 billion, is expected to satisfy about 10 percent of the European Union's natural gas needs. But it also is fraught with political and logistical...