Delek Drilling aims to hive off its stakes in the huge Leviathan gas project off Israel and the Aphrodite gas discovery in Cyprus into a new company set to be listed in London.

This new company will also hold Delek Drilling's interests in future exploration interests, and its shares could also be traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

Delek Drilling believes more value will be accrued to the Leviathan and Aphrodite assets by overseas investors, much as Energean Oil & Gas — which operates the Karish-Tanin project off Israel — realised through a London listing last year.

The company added that a London listing will improve access to sources of international finance.

Delek Drilling holds a 45.34% stake in Leviathan and a 30% interest in Aphrodite, both of which are operated by US independent Noble Energy.

The company also holds a 22% stake in Tamar and an interest in the smaller Dalit discovery which, according to an agreement with the Israeli government, it must sell by the end of 2021.

A new company will hold the Tamar stake.

Delek Drilling is a subsidiary partnership of the Delek Group, controlled by entrepreneur and businessman Yitzhak Tshuva.

Leviathan holds more than 20 trillion cubic feet of gas and is being developed via four deep-water subsea wells tied back to a shallow-water platform.

The platform's jacket was installed last month, while the topsides will leave the US Gulf of Mexico later this year.

First gas is expected late this year, with production expected to reach about 800 million cubic feet per day in 2020.

Noble has stated its ambition of boosting phase one gas production to around 1 billion cubic feet [err day, with a longer-term goal of increasing this volume to 2.1 Bcfd.

Israeli junior Ratio Oil is the remaining partner in this huge field.

Aphrodite — part of which extends into Israeli waters — is also operated by Noble with Shell as the remaining partner.

Talks are under way to export this gas via pipeline to Egypt for liquefaction at the Segas and ELNG plants at the Mediterranean ports of Damietta and Idku.

This deep-water field holds about 4 Tcf of gas plus a small amount of liquids.

Meanwhile, Delek Drilling has assumed operatorship of the Alon D licence off Israel after Noble decided to quit the asset.

Noble has agreed to transfer 22.059% of its existing stake to Delek Drilling.

Delek's interest will thus rise to 75%, with the remaining 25% to be transferred to Ithaca Energy, a wholly owned-subsidiary of Delek Group.

Weekly

London listing on the cards for Delek Drilling