AFP

London-listed firm Energean on Sunday began testing pipes between Israel and the Karish offshore gas field, a key step towards production from the eastern Mediterranean site, a source of friction between neighbours Israel and Lebanon.

Israel has maintained that Karish falls entirely within its territory and is not a subject of negotiation at ongoing, US-mediated maritime border talks with Lebanon.

The two countries remain technically at war.

Beirut has reportedly made claims to parts of Karish, and the Iran-backed Shiite group Hezbollah, which holds huge influence in Lebanon, has previously threatened attacks if Israel began production from the field.

In a statement Sunday, Energean said that “following approval received from the Israeli Ministry of Energy to start certain testing procedures, the flow of gas from onshore to the FPSO has commenced”, referring to the Karish floating production storage offloading facility.

The tests, set to take a number of weeks, were “an important step” towards extracting gas from the Karish, Energean said. 

Lebanon and Israel have engaged in on-off indirect talks since 2020 to delineate their Mediterranean border, which could allow both countries to boost offshore natural gas exploration.

A draft agreement floated by US envoy Amos Hochstein aims to settle competing claims over offshore gas fields and was delivered to Lebanese and Israeli officials in recent days.

Israel had welcomed the terms set out by Hochstein and said they would be subjected to legal review, but gave no indication if it sought substantive changes.

Lebanon presented its response to Washington’s proposal on Tuesday.

Israel said two days later that it planned to reject a proposed Lebanese amendment, even if that jeopardises a possible agreement. 

Israel reiterated this week that production at Karish would begin as soon as possible, regardless of Lebanon’s demands.

Two Lebanese officials involved in the talks told AFP on Sunday the US mediator had  informed Beirut that the operation at Karish was only a test.

Negotiations on the maritime border are still going on, one official said.

On Saturday, the French foreign ministry said Paris was “actively contributing to the American mediation”. 

Under the terms of the US draft agreement leaked to the press, all of Karish would fall under Israeli control, while Qana, another potential gas field, would be divided but its exploitation would be under Lebanon’s control.

French company Total would be licensed to search for gas in the Qana field, and Israel would receive a share of future revenue.

German police were on Sunday probing an act of “sabotage” on the country’s rail infrastructure, with some officials pointing the finger at Russia in the wake of the Nord Stream pipeline explosions.

Important communications cables were cut at two sites on Saturday, forcing rail services in the north to be halted for three hours and causing travel chaos for thousands of passengers.

Rail operator Deutsche Bahn blamed the travel disruptions on “sabotage”, while Transport Minister Volker Wissing spoke of “a targeted and deliberate action”.

Germany’s top-selling daily Bild cited an internal document from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) as saying, in an early analysis of the incident, that an act of “state-ordered sabotage would be conceivable”.

The document pointed to the “widely separated crime scenes” where the cables were severed, in Herne in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia and in Berlin in the east, some 540 kilometres (335 miles) away.

The BKA also noted that the incident comes not long after last month’s undersea blasts on Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines between Germany and Russia.

The pipeline sabotage further raised tensions between Russia and the West, already sky-high over the Ukraine war, but Moscow denies any involvement in the blasts.

Anton Hofreiter, a Green party lawmaker and chairman of the German parliament’s European affairs committee, said Russia could have been behind the train disruptions.

“To pull this off, you have to have very precise knowledge of the railway’s radio system. The question is whether we are dealing with sabotage by foreign powers,” Hofreiter told the Funke newspaper group.

Given that the Nord Stream leaks “pointed to the Kremlin”, “we can’t rule out that Russia could also be behind the attack on the rail services,” he said.

“Maybe both are warning shots because we support Ukraine.”

Police have said the investigation into Saturday’s incident is still wide open and they have not publicly mentioned any suspects. According to local media, authorities are also looking into whether far-left extremists could be to blame.

– ‘Hybrid threats’ –

With concern growing about the vulnerability of Germany’s critical infrastructure, Hofreiter called for 20 billion euros ($19 billion) to be invested in the coming years to boost security, including cyber security.

A senior German military official warned that further attacks were possible.

“Every power station, every energy transport pipe is a potential target,” Major General Carsten Breuer told Bild, speaking of growing “hybrid threats”.

Germany’s conservative opposition CDU party also called for closer monitoring of key infrastructure.

“We must rethink the security architecture of Germany and the EU,” senior CDU lawmaker Thorsten Frei told the RND media group. “The modern age of hybrid warfare requires us to adapt,” he said.

London-listed firm Energean on Sunday began testing pipes between Israel and the Karish offshore gas field, a key step towards production from the eastern Mediterranean site, a source of friction between neighbours Israel and Lebanon. 

Israel has maintained that Karish falls entirely within its territory and is not a subject of negotiation at ongoing, US-mediated maritime border talks with Lebanon. The two countries remain technically at war.

Lebanon has reportedly made claims to parts of Karish and the Iran-backed Shiite group Hezbollah, which holds huge influence in Lebanon, has previously threatened attacks if Israel began production from the field.

In a statement Sunday, Energean said that “following approval received from the Israeli Ministry of Energy to start certain testing procedures, the flow of gas from onshore to the FPSO has commenced”, referring to the Karish floating production storage offloading facility.

The tests, set to take a number of weeks, were “an important step” towards extracting gas from the Karish, Energean said. 

Lebanon and Israel have engaged in on-off indirect talks since 2020 to delineate their Mediterranean border, which could allow both countries to boost offshore natural gas exploration.

A draft agreement floated by US envoy Amos Hochstein aims to settle competing claims over offshore gas fields and was delivered to Lebanese and Israeli officials in recent days.

Israel had welcomed the terms set out by Hochstein and said they would be subjected to legal review, but gave no indication it sought substantive changes.

Lebanon presented its response to Washington’s proposal on Tuesday.

Israel said two days later that it planned to reject Beirut’s proposed amendment, even if that jeopardises a possible agreement. 

Israel reiterated this week that production at Karish would begin as soon as possible, regardless of Lebanon’s demands. 

On Saturday, the French foreign ministry said Paris was “actively contributing to the American mediation”. 

Under the terms of the US draft agreement leaked to the press, all of Karish would fall under Israeli control, while Qana, another potential gas field, would be divided but its exploitation would be under Lebanon’s control.

French company Total would be licensed to search for gas in the Qana field, and Israel would receive a share of future revenue.

“Sabotage” targeting communications infrastructure was to blame for major disruption to the German railway network on Saturday, operator Deutsche Bahn said while the government said no motive had yet been identified.

“Cable sabotage” was the cause of the breakdown, which led to a three-hour suspension of train services throughout northern Germany, a spokesman for the company told AFP.

German Transport Minister Volker Wissing said essential cables “were deliberately and intentionally severed” in two places. 

“It is clear that this was a targeted and deliberate action,” he added, saying the motive was not “yet known”.

He described the incident as “clearly premeditated”.

Specifically, there was damage to the GSM-R, a radio network used for communication on the railway, Der Spiegel reported, quoting security sources.

Any damage to the cable would require “certain knowledge” of the rail system, the Bild daily said, adding that federal police were investigating. 

Traffic was completely interrupted for about three hours because of “a breakdown in the digital radio system for the trains”, before being restored, according to Deutsche Bahn. 

Services were affected between Berlin and regions in the west and north of the country including Schleswig-Holstein, the cities of Hamburg and Bremen, as well as Lower Saxony and parts of North Rhine-Westphalia. 

– Protection of critical infrastructure –

The Berlin-Amsterdam route was also suspended, and thouands of travellers were stranded at stations across the affected regions.

Cancellations and delays were still expected on Saturday despite the restoration of rail services, Deutsche Bahn warned. 

The attack comes just over two weeks after sabotage attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines linking Russia and Germany. 

The German government has also stepped up protection of its critical infrastructure. 

Deutsche Bahn is regularly criticised for delays on its services. 

At the beginning of September, the company said it would carry out massive improvement works, including replacing 137,000 concrete sleepers.

An independent report pointed the finger at “production faults” in the sleepers.

The derailment of a train in the Bavarian Alps in early June, which killed five people and injured more than 40, highlighted the poor state of German rail infrastructure, linked to years of under-investment. 

The government has in recent months been encouraging car-loving Germans to take the train by offering cheap tickets.

Having conquered most industries at home, optimistic chiefs at conglomerate Vingroup are setting their sights much higher as they ramp up plans to sell the first ever Vietnamese car in the mighty US market.

The pivot is a bold move by chairman Pham Nhat Vuong — Vietnam’s richest man — who started out selling dried noodles in the former Soviet Union before amassing his $5 billion fortune in a range of sectors including real estate, tourism and education.

His firm’s auto unit VinFast already has electric vehicles (EVs) on the streets of Hanoi, though the attraction of the lucrative United States market is too good to ignore.

However, the firm admits that competing in the crowded and difficult US market, which is dominated by Tesla, will be a huge but worthwhile task.

“If we can make it there, we can make it anywhere,”  CEO Le Thi Thu Thuy told AFP from the factory site where the finishing touches were being made to the VF8, a mid-size SUV with a sleek design by Italy’s Pininfarina, which worked with Ferrari for decades. 

But, she added, “we want to show people who might not have the correct understanding of Vietnam that Vietnam today is quite different to Vietnam during the war, or even to Vietnam 10 years ago”.

While the aim of getting Americans driving its cars by Christmas may seem a huge ask, Vingroup — Vietnam’s biggest private firm — has a track record of delivering.

Within two years, Pham transformed a muddy patch of swampland near the northern port city of Haiphong into a state-of-the-art factory — complete with 1,200 robots, German, Japanese and Swedish machinery, and a global team from auto giants including BMW and General Motors. 

– Public scepticism –

The company has already invested heavily in its American dream.

In July, VinFast opened six showrooms in California, including a flagship store at one of the trendiest malls in upmarket Santa Monica, though for now it is only taking orders as vehicles are not yet available.

It plans 30 in total by the end of the year, while it has also broken ground on a $2 billion electric vehicle and battery plant in North Carolina that it says will produce 150,000 cars a year when it is fully up and running.

The factory aims to create more than 7,000 new jobs, prompting US President Joe Biden himself to tweet the announcement back in March.

“I always joke that he is the best salesperson we have,” says Thuy.

But the American public will likely be far more sceptical, said Karl Brauer, a Los Angeles-based analyst with iSeeCars.com, a vehicle comparison site.

“It’s been typical for it to take a couple of decades for brand new automakers to the US market to become ingrained,” he said, referencing South Korea’s Hyundai and Kia, which struggled through the 90s and early 2000s.

They are now among the most popular car makers in the United States. 

Americans’ perception may be “this is some unheard-of-brand I’ve never had any experience with, and I’m not sure I have any faith in the quality”, he added. 

– Push into Europe –

To hook customers, VinFast is pushing a highly unusual monthly battery-leasing model for the two cars headed to the United States — the VF8 and VF9 — lowering the cost of the upfront payment to $42,000 and $57,500 respectively. Tesla’s SUVs start at around $65,000.

Once the battery life goes down to 70 percent, VinFast replaces it for free, and aims to repurpose or recycle the old one.

“The theory behind that is we’re giving you a vehicle that is priced similarly to an internal combustion engine vehicle,” Thuy explained. 

The scale of VinFast’s ambition, which extends to Europe, where they plan to open the first of 20 showrooms by the end of the year, has stunned many in the business.

“It is preposterously hard to build a car and sell it, at least to a global audience, as seems to be the ambitions of VinFast,” said Matthew Degen, senior editor at Kelley Blue Book, a car shopping and research site. 

“It usually takes years and years to get a car from a design on paper into something that’s in your hands and you’re actually driving it.”

However, VinFast developed three cars in just 21 months.

And although the regular car market is already saturated, he says, there may be a “brief window” for them to make their mark in the still developing electric vehicle sector.

For Brauer, VinFast’s success will largely come down to millennials. 

They will “have trouble with people over 50 years old… but younger consumers in this country are getting more and more open to new vehicles”.

With deluxe match packages selling for thousands of dollars and five-star hotels doing a brisk trade, a sheen of glamour coats Qatar’s World Cup despite football’s working-class roots.

A penchant for luxury in the energy-rich Gulf state, which has one of the world’s highest GDPs per head, has rubbed off on an unusually high-end edition of a tournament for the masses.

If you’re able to spring $4,950 for a VIP ticket to a group game, you can enjoy drinks, a six-course meal and entertainment at a lounge overlooking the halfway line at Lusail Stadium, north of Doha.

Those with bottomless budgets in the resource-rich region have attractive accommodation options too, with one third-party site offering $4,000-a-night hotel rooms and $26,000 for a “head of state” suite — with a 30-night minimum stay.

Things are a little different for ordinary fans.

Cheaper options include a steel bed in a shared room in the semi-desert near the capital at $84 a night, or accommodation on docked cruise ships from $179 to $800.

Stadium crowds will include Qatar’s migrant labourers, who were offered some tickets at 40 riyals ($11) to watch a sport whose players and core supporters are traditionally blue-collar.

According to Ronan Evain, executive director of Football Supporters Europe, the onus on “premium” experiences has left some fans cold.

“It’s clear that there’s a focus on a type of premium tourism, but the vast majority that go to a World Cup are middle-class,” Evain told AFP.

“They’re not the sort of people who can afford to stay on a cruise liner at $5,000 a week.”

– ‘Solution is to cancel’ – 

The hordes of ticketless fans that usually descend on a World Cup will be reduced in number, as only ticket holders and up to three guests each can enter Qatar during the November 20 – December 18 tournament.

Many supporters will stay elsewhere in the Gulf and board the estimated 100-200 World Cup shuttle flights a day from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman.

Even those options do not come cheap.

In Dubai, an hour’s flight away and expected to be a major destination, an official World Cup package costs $1,500 for four nights in a shared room, including one return flight to Doha but no match tickets.

The Qatar World Cup is at least compact, with all eight stadiums in and around Doha — eradicating the cross-country travel needed at previous editions such as Brazil 2014 or Russia 2018.

“The problem with the World Cup in Qatar is that there are very few alternatives,” said Evain.

“At a World Cup in Brazil or Russia, you can take a train, hire a car, stay 200 kilometres (120 miles) away or come just for the day of the match.

“None of that is possible in Qatar. Either you can’t find accommodation or accommodation is too expensive,” he added.

“People are looking for a solution and for quite a few people the solution is to cancel, because they can’t afford this sort of budget.”

– High-end experiences –

However, Sue Holt, executive director of Expat Sport, the UAE agent for the official World Cup package provider, said there was a range of accommodation “to suit most budgets”.

The United States, Britain, France, Mexico, China and India were among the countries where fans were showing most interest in packages for the UAE, she said.

“Sports tourists generally tend to be older and travel in groups, which can be families, friends or sporting groups,” she said.

“Part of the appeal of this type of travel is that it is a collective, shared experience watching your favourite team or player together.”

These supporters “will include people who have never ventured to this region before”, added Holt.

According to Robert Mogielnicki, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, hosting the World Cup is about “prestige” for Qatar, a monarchy of just 2.8 million people, overwhelmingly expatriate workers.

“What the Qataris don’t want to happen is get stuck with an oversupply of tourism infrastructure for a segment of tourists unlikely to be a regular, consistent presence in the country,” he said, explaining the limited options.

“I suspect that the Qataris will keep looking to attract wealthier tourists from elite circles,” added Mogielnicki, who is also adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University and George Washington University.

“Lots of the momentum behind regional tourism projects, especially in Saudi Arabia, does seem to focus on high-end, luxury experiences these days.”