ExxonMobil and Qatar Energy’s New Cyprus Gas Find Highlights Strategic Risks and Global Energy Game

The recent announcement of a second natural gas discovery off the coast of Cyprus by ExxonMobil and Qatar Energy should raise more than just optimistic headlines. While touted as a step toward reducing Europe’s dangerous dependence on Russian hydrocarbons, this development also exposes the fragility of Western energy strategies that lean heavily on complex, multinational entanglements in an unstable region.Located roughly 190 kilometers southwest of Cyprus at great seabed depths, the Pegasus-1 well is the latest in a string of discoveries that position the Eastern Mediterranean as an emerging energy hotspot. This consortium’s prior find—Glaucus-1 in 2019—estimated at 3.7 trillion...