Tamar is a producing gas and condensate field located in the Levantine Basin offshore Israel. The field was discovered in 2009 and it commenced operations four years later in March 2013 to meet domestic natural gas requirements.

The project has a production capacity of around 1.1 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d) of gas and condensate.

According to an independent evaluation by NSAI, Tamar reservoir contains natural gas reserves of around 11.14 trillion cubic feet (TCF), or around 315 billion cubic metres (BCM). The adjoining Tamar South West (SW) field was discovered in 2013 and it hosts around 796.4BCM of natural gas, as of January 2020.

The initial development budget for the project was $3.1bn, which increased to $4.6bn by 30 September 2021.

Project Gallery

The project partners are Isramco (28.7%), Chevron Mediterranean Limited (25%), Tamar Petroleum (16.75%), Tamar Investment 1 RSC Limited (11%), Tamar Investment 2 RSC Limited (11%), Alon Natural Gas Exploration (4%), and Everest Infrastructure (3.5%).

The original operator of the field was Noble Energy, which was acquired by Chevron in 2020.

Location and reservoir details

The Tamar Gas Project is located within the Levantine Basin in the Tamar Lease. The site is in Licence 309, Matan Block and approximately 90km west of Haifa.

The project covers an area of 100km2 of 250km2 Tamar Lease. The water depth in the region is around 1,700m.

The thickness of Tamar’s reservoir layers reaches up to 300m.

Tamar Project development

Noble Energy had been active in the region since 2006. It has drilled six gas wells in the Tamar Reservoir and one well in the Tamar SW Reservoir (Tamar SW-1).

The wells Tamar-2 to Tamar-6 were completed in 2012.

In 2013, the Tamar SW-1 well was drilled and Nobel Energy installed the Tamar Platform near existing Mari-B Platform.

The flowlines and utility lines were laid to connect the Tamar Reservoir to the platform. The produced output from the Tamar Platform is sent to the Ashdod Onshore Terminal (AOT) through a 30-inch pipeline.

The Tamar platform is self-sustaining and independent from Mari-B platform.

Project details

The Tamar project development features six subsea production wells, an underwater production system to connect the wells and the treatment and production platform. The wells produce 7.1 to 8.5 million cubic metres of natural gas each per day.

Most of the natural gas treatment that includes dehydration and separation of liquids and condensate are conducted on the Tamar platform, situated 24km west of Ashkelon.

The project infrastructure also includes a gas transmission system and condensate from the platform to the shore, and an onshore terminal in Ashdod used for the final treatment of the natural gas.

The natural gas is delivered to the INGL national transmission system from the terminal, while the condensate is fed to a nearby Ashdod refinery.

In August 2016, the project partners received approval from the Israeli Minister of Energy to operate a 10-inch pipe to transport natural gas, thereby boosting gas supply capacity.

The gas flow rate to the INGL transmission system is approximately 1.1BCF per day.

Contractors involved and Agreements

In 2010, Aker Solutions received the contract for subsea umbilicals for the Tamar project. The contract involved the delivery of steel tube umbilicals as well as subsea engineering and project management services for their installation.

Aker Solutions also secured the contract for a mono ethylene glycol (MEG) reclamation unit.

In May 2011, Alliance Engineering secured detailed engineering and design services contract for the Tamar Platform including topsides facilities and deck structure.

TMNG was awarded the contract for the detailed design of various brownfield activities on Tamar platform. This included safety enhancements, maintenance modifications, repurposing methanol storage tank for excess rich glycol storage, piping system design and code compliance.

Atwood Oceanics deployed a semi-submersible rig Atwood Hunter for appraisal well drilling at the Tamar Gas Field.

In April 2011, EMAS AMC received the contract for installing subsea infrastructure and umbilical for the project.

Agmon & Co. Rosenberg Hacohen & Co. provided advisory services for the Tamar Gas Field Project.

In 2014, Noble Energy and its partners signed a non-bidding letter of intent (LoI) with Union Fenosa Gas to supply natural gas production from the Tamar field to Damietta LNG Terminal in Egypt.

The field also has commercial agreements with Israeli domestic market, Jordanian Dead Sea factories and Egyptian market.

Expansion of Tamar project

In December 2022, Chevron and its partners announced a Final Investment Decision (FID) to expand the Tamar natural gas project in order to meet growing domestic demand in Israel and boost supplies to neighbouring countries.

The partners agreed to proceed with the first phase of the two-phase expansion that will increase natural gas production of the field to nearly 1.6BCF. They are expected to invest $673m in the expansion project.

The work is expected to complete in early 2025.