Charles Ellinas

Progress at the climate summit COP30, taking place at Belem in Brazil and being attended by more than 190 countries, has been slow and patchy.

A fire late on Thursday near the East Africa pavilion at COP30 in Belem, Brazil forced mass evacuations from the climate summit, just as negotiations were reaching their end. A ‘bad omen'? Maybe, given what followed.

After the drama of the last few days of the summit, COP30 finally delivered a deal on Saturday ‑ the Global Mutirão (meaning “collective effort”) ‑ despite major disagreements and divisions. It dropped explicit reference to fossil fuels, but it delivered on finance.

The world will carry on consuming oil, more than 100 million barrels per day to 2050 and beyond, with the oil producers’ cartel OPEC+ having just decided to keep on pumping and leave output levels unchanged.

New liquid natural gas project approvals surged in 2025, adding to the coming wave of natural gas supply.

With 2025 coming to a close, announcements for new energy developments and projects in Cyprus and the East Med have been coming in thick and fast, with something new announced every two days on average. An underlying common, factor behind many of these is a US strategy to establish energy dominance over a wide region that includes southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean, which aims to bring any dependence on Russian energy to an end and stop Chinese influence in the region.

The global climate summit COP30 that took place in Brazil in November fell short of expectations. It is not that the world is not concerned about climate change or that energy transition is not progressing, but more the outcome of the emerging global energy reset.

Undoubtedly the war in Iran has upended the way we view energy security and its impact is global, including on southeast Europe and the East Med. That was the subject of a roundtable conference organised by the Institute of Energy for Southeast Europe (IENE) at the European Parliament in Brussels this week.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has stopped about 20 per cent of global LNG supply from reaching markets and has sent gas prices about 50 per cent up from pre-war levels. But it has also presented the East Med with an unexpected opportunity: to create an LNG hub…

On 19 May Cyprus approved the ‘Development and Production Plan' of the Cronos gasfield in block 6 by the ENI-TotalEnergies consortium. This focuses on a fast-track, subsea tie-back to the existing Zohr and Egyptian gas infrastructure, to be liquefied at the Damietta LNG plant for export. The estimated 3 trillion cubic feet (tcf) Cronos is planned to supply natural gas to Damietta by 2028