This project continues as one of the leading initiatives of the Centre. Launched shortly after the discovery of natural gas resources by the Republic of Cyprus in the island’s offshore in late 2011, the project produced in February 2013 a serious study of the new subject of hydrocarbons offshore Cyprus and its implications for the Cyprus problem. Since 2014, the project’s scope has been expanded to include research and analysis about energy and hydrocarbons-related economic and political issues and developments in the wider Eastern Mediterranean context, including, in particular, Turkey, Greece, Israel and Egypt. According to a 2010 assessment of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the Eastern Mediterranean’s Nile Delta Basin and Levant Basin Provinces together may hold a mean of 223 plus 122 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of recoverable gas (equivalent, for example, to more than double the current gas reserves of Algeria, the country with the biggest proven reserves in the Mediterranean region).