Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias, Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Cyprus’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ioannis Kasoulidis shake hands during a news conference following a meeting, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Athens, Greece, April 5, 2022. REUTERS/Louiza Vradi

Greece, Cyprus and Israel will continue working together on natural gas pipeline projects with European energy dependency a new focus because of the war in Ukraine, their foreign ministers said on Tuesday.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who met his Greek and Cypriot counterparts in Athens, said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed the structure of the energy market in Europe and in the Middle East.

The three allies, he said, would seek to boost their energy ties and expand their cooperation in the coming months to include more countries.

The European Union aims to cut its reliance on Russian gas by two-thirds this year and end all Russian fossil fuel imports by 2027 due to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Cyprus, Greece and Israel have agreed to build the world’s longest and deepest underwater power cable that will traverse the Mediterranean seabed and link their electricity grids. The project, called the Euro-Asia interconnector, is expected to be completed by 2024.

Another project which has been agreed between the three is the EastMed subsea pipeline. Designed to supply Europe with natural gas from the eastern Mediterranean, it has been in the planning for several years.

“We are proceeding with projects such as the Euroasia Interconnector and the EastMed pipeline… and we are confident that when materialized they will have another practical and geo-strategical value for the Eastern Mediterranean and the European Union,” said Ioannis Kasoulides, the Foreign Minister of Cyprus.