Palestinians get gas for power plant from Israeli

RAMALLAH - A Palestinian company signed a deal with an international energy company and its Israeli partners on Sunday to get natural gas for an upcoming power plant in the West Bank for 20 years, a Palestinian official said.

The agreement was signed in Jerusalem between Palestine Power Generation Co, Texas-based Noble Energy Inc. and the latter's Israeli partners to extract gas from Israel's newly-discovered Leviathan gas and oil field.

Under the deal, the Palestinian side will obtain 4.75 billion cubic meters of gas with $1.2 billion to run a power plant it plans to build near the West Bank city of Jenin, Omar Kataneh, head of the Palestinian Power Authority, told Xinhua.

Yitzhak Tshuva, whose Delek Group is one of the Israeli partners, told reporters after signing the deal that he believes "a strong and stable economy shared by the two sides will bring peace and stability to the entire region, so that everyone will enjoy prosperity and economic growth."

The Leviathan field, located off the coast of central Israel, is considered to be the biggest deepwater gas find of the century worldwide, with an estimated reserve of 530 billion cubic meters of gas.