Egypt, Greece and Cyprus Reaffirm Plan to Route Cypriot Gas Through Egypt to Europe by 2028

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides met Tuesday, September 8, in El Alamein on Egypt's Mediterranean coast, according to Euronews and multiple Cypriot outlets. The trilateral summit produced a joint declaration reaffirming a plan first cemented in July: piping gas from Cyprus's offshore Cronos field to Egypt for processing and export to Europe.

Eni, which operates the field, and its 50-50 partner TotalEnergies took a final investment decision on Cronos on July 28, according to policypress.cy. On the same day as Tuesday's summit, engineering firm McDermott announced Eni's Cyprus subsidiary had awarded it a contract worth between $500 million and $750 million to handle engineering and installation, Euronews reported.

The mechanics: four offshore wells feed gas through an undersea pipeline to Egypt, where it will run through existing infrastructure tied to the Zohr field before being liquefied at Damietta and shipped out as LNG. Eni says the field holds more than 3 trillion cubic feet of gas and, at full production, should yield the equivalent of about 2.8 million tonnes of LNG a year. First gas is targeted for 2028.

TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné called it a Mediterranean route that will "contribute to Europe's energy security by diversifying its LNG supply sources," according to Euronews. Mitsotakis added a second layer, laying out a path for that LNG to move onward through Greece's Revithoussa and Alexandroupolis terminals and into southeastern and central Europe via what's called the Vertical Corridor, per IndexBox. Eni has made clear it will market the gas broadly across Europe and beyond, not exclusively to Greece.

Why now

Euronews reports the push comes as Gulf LNG shipments face disruption from the ongoing Iran war and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, leaving European buyers looking for alternatives. The underlying Cronos project and its financing were locked in weeks before Tuesday's meeting.

A fair skeptic's question: how much of this is new? The FID happened July 28. The McDermott contract, while announced the same day as the summit, was a business transaction between Eni and a contractor, not a government decision. What the three governments actually did Tuesday was restate political support and set a target for finishing the connecting infrastructure "as soon as possible," language that doesn't commit anyone to a hard deadline beyond Eni's own 2028 first-gas target.

The rest of the declaration

Beyond gas, the leaders agreed to activate a permanent secretariat for their Trilateral Cooperation Mechanism, which dates to 2014, based in Nicosia, according to Daily News Egypt. They also backed the GREGY electricity interconnector between Egypt and Greece, a separate infrastructure project from the gas pipeline.

The joint declaration waded into a long list of regional disputes. On Gaza, the three governments backed the second phase of President Donald Trump's plan to end the conflict and UN Security Council Resolution 2803, while opposing forced displacement of Palestinians and any split between Gaza and the West Bank, per the National Herald and Cyprus Mail. On Lebanon, they called for full implementation of UN Resolution 1701 and an Israeli troop withdrawal. On Libya, they backed a Libyan-led political process without foreign interference.

Cyprus Mail flagged a pointed line in the declaration: any maritime boundary agreements must be based on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Turkey is not a UNCLOS signatory and argues the convention gives too much weight to islands in drawing maritime borders, a direct point of friction with Cyprus over gas rights in the Eastern Mediterranean. The declaration also endorsed UN-led efforts, headed by envoy Maria Angela Holguin, toward a comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus problem.

Christodoulides said the three countries' defense ministers will meet in Cairo within two weeks and foreign ministers will convene in New York in late September, with Cyprus set to host an eleventh trilateral summit, according to policypress.cy.

What to watch

The hard deadline that matters is 2028, when Eni expects first gas from Cronos. Between now and then, the test is whether the pipeline connecting Cyprus to Egyptian processing facilities actually gets built on schedule, and whether Egypt's LNG export capacity at Damietta, which the companies say needs restoring to full regular output, comes back online in time to handle the added volume.