EU considers helping with Mideast energy infrastructure to bypass conflict zones 

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, left, speaks with the Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary General Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi in Nicosia, Cyprus, Friday [AP Photo]

A  painful fuel crunch and soaring oil and gas prices triggered by the Iran war have nudged the European Union to look hard into funding alternative energy routes in the Middle East to circumvent hot spots like the Strait of Hormuz.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Friday that the EU is ready to work with Persian Gulf countries for new projects conveying energy to global markets that wouldn’t be held hostage to war or geopolitical strife.

“The events of the past month have taught us a hard lesson,” von der Leyen told a news conference at the end of an informal meeting of EU leaders in the capital of Cyprus. “Our security is not just related, it is intrinsically linked. A threat to a merchant vessel in the Strait of Hormuz is a threat to a factory, for example, in Belgium.”

The EU executive called for ramping up defense ties and promoted the bloc’s maritime security mission in the Red Sea as a possible naval security option in the Persian Gulf, but focused her public remarks on European support for repairing and building Middle East energy sites.

Diversification of Middle East energy infrastructure

“We are also ready to team up with the Gulf countries to diversify export infrastructure away from solely the bottleneck of the Hormuz Strait,” she said, also offering to help repair Gulf energy infrastructure damaged in the war.

A fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally passes through the Strait of Hormuz, but the war has largely closed the waterway, spiking fuel prices.

Early Friday, Brent crude was up 98 cents at $100.33 a barrel. U.S. benchmark crude picked up 81 cents to $96.66 per barrel.

Von der Leyen repeated that as a result of the oil and gas price hikes, the 27-nation bloc’s energy bill in the last 43 days skyrocketed by 25 billion euros ($29.3 billion.)

Neither she nor European Council President Antonio Costa offered precise details on which projects are being considered or when they’ll move forward. But von der Leyen referred to the India-Middle-East-Europe Economic Corridor between the EU and the world’s largest democracy.

Von der Leyen said a summit between the EU and the Gulf Cooperation Council scheduled for later this year will give both sides the opportunity to explore such projects.

The EU’s focus on its southern neighbors

The rotating EU presidency is currently held by Cyprus, an island nation adjacent to Lebanon, Syria, Israel and Turkey. Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides has sought to bring the bloc closer to countries in the Middle East to shore up their economies and bolster their security.

That focus was underscored by his guests at the EU leaders informal summit: Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El Sissi, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Jordan’s Crown Prince Hussein and GCC Secretary-General Jasem Mohamed AlBudaiwi. MDT/AP