Apparently, Israel isn't only rich in natural gas.
The above map shows huge deposits of shale oil located in Israel...at least 250 billion barrels of oil in Israel’s Shfela basin, comparable to Saudi Arabia’s entire reserves of 260 billion barrels of oil. And some experts believe there may be double that amount available.
( h/t Joshua's Army member Louie Louie for the vid)
An American consortium named IDT owns the Shfela concession through its subsidiary, Israel Energy Initiatives and now has a team in place that includes Lord Jacob Rothschild, hedge fund investor Michael Steinhardt, Rupert Murdoch, former president of Mobil Oil Eugene Renna, former president of Occidental Oil Shale Allan Sass, and the former president of Halliburton Dick Cheney, all of whom are not only savvy investors knowledgeable when it comes to oil but long time Zionists and friends of Israel. Legendary oil man Harold Vinegar is also part of the team, Shell Oil’s former chief scientist with some 240 patents to his name who revolutionized the shale oil industry.
Vinegar was a key player in making the extraction of shale oil environmentally friendly and far more profitable. The heat needed to extract the shale from the rock is provided by natural gas, which Israel, just by coincidence, also has in abundance. The new technology provides oil at about $35-$40 a barrel, produces greenhouse gas emissions less than half that from conventional oil wells and does not use water.
The geopolitical impact is also not without interest.
Right now, Russia has an iron grip on all of the natural gas pipelines coming from Central Asia into Europe, and both China and the EU are deferential to OPEC regimes like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela and the Sudan because they desperately need the oil.
The ability of Israel to export natural gas in large quantities to the EU in the next year or so is going to break the gas stranglehold and change the political climate in Europe towards Israel significantly. And as Israel's shale oil comes online, expect China and India, both of whom Israel already has significant commercial ties with to want a share of the action as well.
Unlike the gentleman in the above video, I don't expect the 'Palestinians' to peacefully enjoy a little piece of the action from increased trade, especially since the 'Palestinians' now have a de facto boycott on Israeli-made goods. In fact, I expect one cost of doing business is going to be protecting the shale oil and the offshore gas facilities from terrorist attacks. But then, the Israelis are used to that and should be able to cope.
Imagine a world in which OPEC no longer has a stranglehold on the world's economy, and where low cost energy promotes prosperity globally.
9 comments:
i kept looking at all the names ff mentioned as investors and couldn't find george soros anywhere??????
i would have hoped ff had beat the EU drum a little harder, given boycott after boycott of israeli goods and know how.
can you say scotch for oil?
how about britain and france?
are they gonna take any joo oil?
this is business, and should be treated that way.
geopolitically, i expect the biggest threats to come from egypt and iran. and the action may not come from their proxies either.
......i bet hussein's head is about to explode.....
the oil shale extraction they are talking about in this project is highly polluting and dangerous. All the talk of being the next Saudi Arabia is just silly - its actually impossible unless you want to turn half the country in to one giant oil rig.
You obviously aren't aware of the technology involved, anonymous. It's neither hazardous nor polluting, has a fraction of the greenhouse gases involved in normal oil drilling and involves no messy open pit mines.
And Howard Vinegar, whose in charge of the program helped develop the clean technology involved. As for 'turning the country into one giant oil rig' - the shale deposits are all in sparsely populated areas of the Negev and involves approximately 25 square kilometers!
Nice try, no sale anonymous.
Regards,
Rob
If this works out, it is potentially great news for Israel and for the world. If the EU and America are smart and don't allow thmselves to be blinded by ideology, they can get oil from a reliable source that isn't hostile to their intersts, while undermining those who are hostile to their interests.
Will they allow their ideology to get in the way of a good thing? The current leadership likely would. If we can change our leaders in America and Western Europe, perhaps not.
"...both China and the EU are deferential to OPEC regimes like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, and the Sudan because they desparately need the oil." This is, to a large extent true. America is also deferential to these regimes for much the same reason. For the EU it goes deeper though. America is their "strategic competitor." As such, they will tend to side with entities who are hostile to America.
As for the geoploitical impact, whilke its true India and China typically lean anti-Israel, why is this so? Is it because they need the oil and need to "make nice" with the suppliers or does it have an ideological component? If its all or mosly about oil, then we would likely see big changes in their policies toward Israel. That is, if these oil finds work out. I pray they do.
As for America and the EU, their anti-Israel stances have a strong ideological component. As such, they would likely continue with such policies even if it undermines their economic and national security interests. Now we in America and the EU do have the option of changing our leaders. I pray we will do so and people who will behave senibly will be holding those positions of leadership in the near future.
Israel's shale oil & gas finds are upped by those we have in the Rocky Mountain & Great basin states to the 100th power. If we had a real American as a president & a non-malignant democorrupt party we would replace Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, & Russia as the primary source of energy for the world in five years.
Not quite to the 100th power, anonymous, but they're substantial. Even more substantial are our coal deposits, which can be gasified using clean,proven technology to create synthetic fuel at around $50 or less per barrel, cheaper than half of the going rate for crude right now.
Instead of developing that, your president just gave a billion dollars of your tax dollars to Brazil to drill their offshore oil 'because we want to be your best customers!'
Big deal. The US burns 21 million barrels of oil each day. That a billion barrels every 50 days or so.
Assuming (a) US oil consumption remains flat and (b) that Israel can actually produce 250 billion barrels from this formation, it will be totally gone in 33 years' time.
What then?
You unfortunately miss the big picture, anonymous, and we need to look at ALL the statistics to see why.
Actually, the US consumes is a bit over 18 million barrels per day. What you neglected to mention is that we produce half of that domestically, over 9 million barrels per day,roughly the same amount of oil as Canada, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates combined making us the number 3 producer in the world.
And as you know, we're not even drilling or pumping at anything like full capacity, nor are we gasifying coal or utilizing shale oil to any great degree yet.
The oil we import comes not from the Arabs. The Saudis, the only sizable Arab US importer accounts for roughly 1.1 million barrels per day, about the same amount that gets produced in Texas.
Our imported oil mostly comes from ( in this order) Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Venezuela, and our suppliers are pretty spread around geographically.
Israel could easily replace what we get from the Saudis, be oil self-sufficient ( The Israelis have nuclear power plants) and export substantial oil to places like the EU, India and China without running dry for quite some time.
You're simply mistaken.
Regards,
Rob
There are foibles in all of us. There are even Physics Foibles. Entropy is one of them.
Inside a warm damp cave, completely sealed off from the outside world, will life survive?
Answer: No life forms could flourish indefinitely.
In an isolated system, entropy always increases. Life tries to push entropy in the opposite direction. When life is created, entropy decreases in the cave but nature demands a greater entropy increase offset.
The cave, being sealed, would mean that entropy would reach its max, thus energy necessary to sustain and generate new life would be unavailable.
Maybe we should learn a lesson from this. Available energy is mandatory. Wealth may equate to available energy. If you want to live in a nation that is prospering, make sure that its available energy supply is abundant
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