London-listed Energean plans to decide by mid-2023 on how best to fast-track the development of 1 trillion cubic feet of gas it discovered offshore Israel last year, with exports to Cyprus on its radar.

Gas from Israel is currently exported to Egypt and Jordan, but proposals to pipe it to Cyprus have been hampered by the country’s limited demand and, therefore, the need to build a liquefied natural gas plant on the island to send the gas further afield.

In 2019, Energean filed a $350 million plan with Nicosia’s authorities to build a 215-kilometre pipeline between its Karish field in Israel — which came on stream late last year — and the Cypriot port of Vassilikos.