Karish & Tanin Gas Field
The FPSO Model for the East Med
Developed by Energean around the region's first FPSO and producing since October 2022, Karish is the East Med's proof that mid-sized fields can be commercial — and the production concept Cyprus's Aphrodite development mirrors.
† marks a headline figure in the tiles above with no primary source on file. It covers those figures and nothing else. Every other number on this page — in the prose, the milestones, the development notes and the answers — is outside it, and many of those have no source recorded at all and carry no mark either, so the absence of a mark says nothing about them. Where a field has no published figure, the absence is explained in the text and cannot be marked.
Overview
Karish and Tanin were discovered by Noble Energy in 2013, but their real story began in 2016, when Israeli regulators — seeking competition in a market dominated by Tamar and Leviathan — required their sale. Greece's Energean bought both fields and committed to a development model new to the region: the Energean Power, a purpose-built floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) moored about 90 km offshore.
Production started in October 2022, supplemented by the Karish North discovery (2019) tied back to the same vessel. Together the fields hold roughly 2–3 tcf — modest by Leviathan standards, but the FPSO concept made them commercial and gave Israel a third independent supply source.
Karish also sits at the centre of East Med diplomacy: the field lies just south of the line claimed by Lebanon, and the October 2022 Israel–Lebanon maritime boundary agreement — brokered by the United States — was concluded weeks before first gas, precisely to de-risk it.
Updated October 2026
- Energean
- Reuters
- trade press
Why It Matters for Cyprus
Karish is the direct conceptual ancestor of the Aphrodite development: a mid-sized Levantine Basin field produced through a floating unit rather than fixed platforms or onshore plants. When Aphrodite's partners sanctioned a floating production unit design, they were following the path Energean proved bankable.
Energean itself is a stone's throw from Cypriot acreage — and the company's success turned the "small field, floating solution" model into the template every East Med developer, Cyprus included, now benchmarks against.
Updated October 2026
- Energean
- operator disclosures
Frequently Asked Questions
Who operates the Karish gas field?
Energean operates Karish, Karish North and Tanin with a 100% working interest, having acquired the fields from Noble Energy's forced divestiture in 2016. Production flows through the Energean Power FPSO, the first vessel of its kind in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Why was the Israel–Lebanon maritime deal linked to Karish?
Karish lies just south of the maritime line Lebanon claimed, and Hezbollah had threatened the project during 2022. The US-brokered boundary agreement of October 2022 settled the line weeks before first gas, de-risking Karish and opening Lebanese waters (including the Qana prospect) to exploration.