Cyprus Gas Goes Via Egypt

Eni and TotalEnergies have now put money behind Cronos, the first Cypriot offshore gas field to move from promising discovery to actual development. The plan is for the gas to reach Europe as LNG, meaning gas chilled until it becomes liquid and can be shipped by tanker, by 2028.

For Malta, the story is familiar in one respect: small island states in the Mediterranean often discover that energy independence still depends on someone else's infrastructure. Cyprus has the gas. Egypt has the export machinery. And Egypt, at the same time, is short of gas itself.

How the gas gets to Europe

Cronos sits about 185 km southwest of Cyprus. Gas from four subsea wells will be carried through a new 105-km pipeline into the system linked to Eni's giant Zohr field in Egyptian waters (TotalEnergies, Ahram Online).

From there, the gas goes through existing infrastructure to the Damietta LNG plant on Egypt's coast. It is liquefied, loaded onto tankers, and sent to a European regasification terminal, where it is turned back into gas for use in the grid.

The route is being used because Egypt already has liquefaction capacity. Building a standalone LNG facility in Cyprus would cost roughly twice as much. Cypriot Energy Minister Michalis Damianos put the project cost at about $2 billion and told AP that pipeline construction could begin later in 2026, take up to 18 months, and allow European consumers to receive gas as early as March 2028 (Euronews, ABC/AP).

Egypt needs the gas more than Europe does

That dependence on Egypt is the project's weak point. Egypt has moved from being a gas exporter to being a net importer. Its domestic production fell from about 59 bcm in 2023 to 42 bcm in 2025, with the French Treasury and the US Energy Information Administration pointing to falling output at Zohr and rising demand at home (French Treasury, EIA).

Egypt's own LNG imports reached a record 9.01 million tonnes in 2025, several times more than Cronos is designed to produce in a year (S&P Global, EnterpriseAM).

That matters because Damietta is not just an export outlet. In a shortage, it becomes part of Egypt's domestic energy balancing act. The Cronos agreement includes a clause allowing about one-fifth of the gas to cover Egyptian needs (ABC/AP). Europe is not first in the queue for all the output.

A real project, but a small one

The investment decision is real. In energy terms, this is the point at which companies stop studying a field and start spending money on it. Eni, the operator with 50%, and TotalEnergies, also with 50%, are backing a field discovered in 2022, appraised in 2024, and now approved for development with a target plateau of about 2.8 million tonnes per year of LNG (Eni, TotalEnergies). Each partner will market half.

For the EU, the volumes are useful but limited. The bloc imported a record 146 bcm of LNG in 2025, making it the world's largest LNG buyer (European Commission, MondoVisione/ACER). Cronos adds another non-Russian source from the eastern Mediterranean, but not one large enough to shift European gas prices on its own. No named European buyer, terminal allocation or long-term sale agreement has been disclosed.

Cyprus gains most politically. The island has made several offshore gas discoveries since 2011, but none has reached production. For a country that still generates most of its electricity from imported oil, producing offshore gas is a milestone even before a single cargo reaches Europe. Cypriot officials called the investment decision "historic" (Cyprus Mail, Politis).

Eni and TotalEnergies get a faster and cheaper route to LNG sales than building from scratch in Cyprus. Egypt keeps its liquefaction plants active and secures the right to use some of the gas at home. Europe gets extra supply, but not enough for households to expect cheaper bills. The cargoes will still land in a global LNG market shaped by Asian demand, shipping costs and available terminal capacity.

Cronos is funded and it is moving. Whether its gas reaches Europe as planned depends on whether Egypt's shortage turns the export route into a domestic safety valve.