Who owns the East Med? A decade ago, the answer would have been simple: whoever produced the most gas. Today, influence over regional gas belongs not to countries with the largest reserves but to those controlling the infrastructure gas must pass through — and Egypt and Turkey are increasingly emerging as the clear frontrunners.

But ask analysts who wins the race — Egypt or Turkey — and you get three diverging answers. One says Turkey, on the strength of a flexibility-driven system it has spent a decade building and is now largely operational. The other points to Egypt, citing the USD tens of bns of liquefaction infrastructure already sunk in the ground and a pipeline head start into the Levant that Ankara is yet to match. A third tells us the framing is wrong — the two are complements, not rivals.

Underneath the split lies a shift — the gas hub has become a tolling business. A country collects a fee each time gas is liquefied, regasified, stored, shipped, or pushed across a border, no matter who owns the molecules. “The most common misconception is that a gas hub is simply a place where gas passes through,” Energos Infrastructure CEO Arthur Regan tells EnterpriseAM. “In reality, successful hubs create value through infrastructure, connectivity, optionality, and flexibility.”

SOUND SMART- A gas hub used to mean a place with gas. A tolling hub means a place that owns the conversion infrastructure — liquefaction plants that supercool gas into LNG for shipping, regasification terminals (increasingly floating ones, or FSRUs) that turn it back into pipeline gas, plus storage and cross-border pipelines. The owner charges a service fee at each step, like a toll booth.

Rising competition

The race is split along two models: Pipelines, which is the simplest and cheapest route but limited to connected neighbors, and supercooled cargoes, which can travel anywhere but need liquefaction and regasification terminals at either end.

Both ends are heating up at once. Egypt is deepening its bid for the tolling model — pulling in Israeli and (in the future) Cypriot gas for re-export and standing up a fleet of FSRUs as its own production slides. Turkey is diversifying its sources, reeling in LNG contracts from different suppliers and pipeline gas from neighboring gas-rich countries like Azerbaijan. Essentially, both are angling for returns from the assets connecting producers to consumers, betting this could be as lucrative as the gas itself.

The two models have much in common: Both are now heavy gas importers, not the exporters they once were or hoped to be. Egypt brought in a record 13.1 bn cubic meters (bcm) of LNG in 2025 as domestic output fell, Israeli flows halted, and summer demand climbed. Turkey imported roughly 17 bcm the same year, with its own production covering only a sliver of consumption. Both want to pull in East Med volumes, make themselves harder for Europe to do without, and convert infrastructure into leverage.

“Both understand that future geopolitical relevance will depend not only on domestic resources, but also on control over infrastructure,” Blue Water Strategy Senior Advisor Cyril Widdershoven tells EnterpriseAM. “As a result, the competitive gap between the two countries is narrowing.”

Assessing the structural advantage(s)

Egypt’s edge was built in another era, when it was a net exporter. It is still home to the East Med’s only large-scale LNG export infrastructure — the Idku and Damietta liquefaction plants — with a combined nameplate capacity of about 16.7 bcm a year (12 bn tons in LNG). A facility like Idku would take a competitor five to seven years and more than USD 10 bn to replicate, which is the whole point — the infrastructure is already paid for and the goal now is to keep it fully operational.

That’s where Cyprus comes in. Gas from the 3.7 tn cubic feet (tcf) Aphrodite and 3 tcf Cronos fields is set to feed Egyptian plants between 2027 and 2031. Cyprus has gas but not enough to justify building its own multi-bn-USD terminal; Egypt has the terminals but increasingly needs imported gas to run them. “Cyprus doesn't have a choice,” a veteran analyst who has tracked Egypt's hub ambitions for 15 years tells us on condition of anonymity. “The fields they found are not big enough to justify building their own LNG export facility. Egypt is really the only option Cyprus has.”

Israel both proves Egypt’s model and exposes its weakness. Gas from the Leviathan and Tamar fields already flows into Egypt to be consumed or re-exported, but repeated regional flare-ups have shut those fields down more than once — a reminder of the risk in leaning too hard on a single (and fickle) source.

Hence the push for imports and optionality through regasification infrastructure. Egypt now runs a fleet of FSRUs with combined peak regasification capacity for roughly 2.7 bcf/d. FSRUs are floating units (vessels, technically) that it can deploy far faster than the alternative — which is fixed onshore terminals that usually take “a minimum of 7 to 10 years to build” and 20 years or more to pay back, Excelerate Energy Chief Cargo Officer Mykyta Shepchenia tells us. It has already tested the model: Earlier this year, Egypt received LNG cargoes on behalf of Lebanon and Syria, regasified them aboard the Energos Force unit docked at Jordan's Aqaba port, and pushed the gas north through the Arab Gas Pipeline.

“Importing and exporting — this would be the endgame for Egypt,” Shell Egypt VP and Country Chair Dalia El Gabry tells EnterpriseAM. The country can import LNG, regasify it, and send it down a pipeline, or import pipeline gas, liquefy it, and ship LNG. “Few countries possess all of these elements simultaneously,” Regan said.

If Egypt’s business is conversion, Turkey’s is rerouting. Sitting between Russia, the Caspian, Iran, and the global LNG market, Ankara is building for flexibility rather than processing. “What Turkey is attempting to build is a fully integrated energy ecosystem that combines all three functions: transit hub, trading hub and balancing market,” Widdershoven tells us. “Transit countries earn fees, while trading hubs and balancing markets create influence, pricing power and geopolitical leverage.”

Turkey lacks any liquefaction capacity, but regasification and storage are its strongest cards. Five LNG import terminals let it switch between seaborne and pipeline supply, while underground storage at Silivri and Tuz Gölü — a combined 6.3 bcm set to more than double by 2029 — lets it buy gas cheap, hold it, and release it when prices climb. Supply diversification is moving fast: Botas has signed five long-term LNG deals in 18 months — with EonMobil, Shell, TotalEnergies, Mercuria, and Woodside — as Washington and Brussels press it to cut ties with Moscow, still its largest supplier.

The endgame is to make Turkey the place “where prices are formed, contracts are negotiated, and regional supply-demand imbalances are managed,” Widdershoven says, and its current infrastructure allows it to “to purchase gas when prices are lower, inject it into storage and release it when demand increases or when prices rise.”

Not all of this infrastructure earns the same. Liquefaction is the most lucrative link in the chain. Tolling fees run roughly USD 2-3 per MMBtu against USD 0.3-0.8 for regasification, several times higher, according to Welligence Energy Analytics’ head of APAC and global LNG, Marc Howson. That’s why Egypt’s paid-for export plants matter so much — and why Turkey's import-and-reroute model is, in the veteran analyst’s words, more “low margin, steady volume.”

The deeper split is over optionality. Pipeline gas is cheaper to move once the pipe exists, but it's captive — point-to-point, with no room to play the market without massive storage. LNG costs more to ship but can be redirected mid-voyage to whoever pays most. “If you load an LNG tanker in Egypt, you can ship it anywhere in the world,” the analyst says. “Turkey sells to Bulgaria; they have to sell to Bulgaria. They can’t ship the pipeline.” That flexibility is what Egypt's planners are confident about — and what Turkey's storage build-out is meant to replicate by other means.

Mostly, the disagreement comes down to timing. For Widdershoven, Turkey's model looks more resilient today, precisely because it has stacked up options — multiple suppliers, multiple routes, growing storage, and domestic Black Sea production. “Infrastructure creates exports. Ecosystems create influence,” he says, arguing Ankara “may ultimately emerge as the most influential gas player in the Eastern Mediterranean over the next decade.” The veteran analyst sees Egypt’s moment coming later: The Arab Gas Pipeline already hands Cairo a head start into regional markets and roughly USD 30-40 bn of infrastructure is now in the ground, so while Turkey may be ahead now, Egypt can take off within 5-10 years. “Egypt can't do anything until its domestic supply-demand balance is in surplus.”

The third view: None of this is the right framing. “Don't let the natural competition between the nations get in the way of cooperation,” Welligence VP of MENA Research Ross Casidy tells EnterpriseAM. “An interconnected, regional energy system is what is required.” On that read, both models survive — Turkey's pipelines winning on cost when the region is calm, Egypt's LNG on flexibility and perceived neutrality when it isn’t. As Widdershoven put it, Europe “will likely continue relying on both LNG and pipeline imports for decades.”

Where the two models actually collide now is the Levant. Syria’s slow recovery is the prize, and here geography tilts toward Turkey. “If Syria's economy continues to recover, Turkey is very likely to emerge as its most important external energy supplier,” Widdershoven says, because pipeline gas delivered overland would almost certainly undercut LNG routed through Egypt. But Egypt’s advantage with the Arab Gas Pipeline also gives it a “massive head start” into those markets, the veteran analyst counters.

What’s next?

Egypt’s case is gated on production. It can't re-export at scale until it clears its own deficit — best case 2028-2030 on the analyst's timeline — even as Cypriot gas begins feeding its plants from 2027 and it adds regasification capacity. Turkey’s path runs through diplomacy and providing trade optionality: More LNG offtake to keep Washington onside, and whether EU origin rules tighten around the “Turkish blend” — surplus sold on to Europe after mixing gas from different origins, which has left Brussels weighing sanctions on terminals suspected of channeling Russian fuel into the bloc.

Prices are the other key factor to watch: Egypt’s export window around 2030 is likely to open just as global LNG markets swing into surplus, when margins will be thinner than they are now. The infrastructure, as the analysts keep saying, outlives the cycle. The question is which country's tolling machine will be running hardest when the market allows healthy margins.