Israel’s Gas and Oil Shale Bonanza May Have Strategic Implications

Two new developments in the Israeli energy sector could well help offset the West’s growing dependence on potential problematic sources of energy.

The Tamar field, which should begin production in 2013, is expected to supply all of Israel’s domestic requirements for at least 20 years.

The Economist suggested in November 2010 that the recently discovered Leviathan field, which has twice the gas of Tamar, could be completely devoted to exports.

All the undersea gas fields together have about 25 trillion cubic feet of gas, but the potential for further discoveries is considerably greater, given that the US Geological Survey estimates that there are 122 trillion cubic feet of gas in the whole Levant Basin, most of which is within Israel’s jurisdiction.

What is less well-known, but even more dramatic, is the work being done on the country’s oil shale.

The British-based World Energy Council reported in November 2010 that Israel had oil shale from which it is possible to extract the equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil. Yet these numbers are currently undergoing a major revision internationally.

A new assessment was released late last year by Dr. Yuval Bartov, chief geologist for Israel Energy Initiatives, at the yearly symposium of the prestigious Colorado School of Mines.

He presented data that Israels' oil shale reserves are actually the equivalent of 250 billion barrels (that compares with 260 billion barrels in the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia).

Independent oil industry analysts have been carefully looking at the shale, and have not refuted these findings. As a consequence of these new estimates, Israel may emerge as the third largest deposit of oil shale, after the US and China.

New technologies, being developed for Israeli shale, seek to separate the oil from the shale rock 300 meters underground; these techniques actually produce water, rather than use it up.

The technology will be tested in a pilot project followed by a demonstration stage to show that the underground separation of oil from shale is environmentally sound before going to full-scale production.

The present goal is to produce commercial quantities of shale oil by the end of the decade.

Read the Full Article from the Jerusalem Post HERE