Moses Led the Jews to...Shale Oil
In addition to the natural gas deposits found offshore in various places in the Mediterranean, Israel also has apparently huge shale oil deposits, which with the rising prices of conventional oil have recently become profitable to extract. Some say the yield of shale oil could be as high as 250 billion barrels, comparable to that of Saudi Arabia.
These deposits were found in the Shfela area, near Emek haElah (The Elah Valley), where King David found his round stones and defeated the giant Goliath. Extracting these deposits often require methods, such as hydraulic fracturing ("fracking"), which may impact the environment--it's very controversial in the United States at this time, especially because the chemicals used in this process could contaminate ground water. The beauty of the Israeli deposits is, that there is a deep separation between the shale and the aquifer by "200 meters of impermeable rock." Dr. Harold Vinegar of Israel Energy Initiative speaks here about these new developments (hat tip Elder of Ziyon).
In the video below (Hebrew) Israel Energy Initiatives' Avgad Meiri explains how they have a pilot project to drill in an area about 80 meters, about the size of an average Israeli apartment (Israeli apartments are small), extract through heating, and produce oil from shale rock in a test area the approximate size of an average soccer field. This will be done in an environmentally safe manner, with intense oversight. At the pilot's end, the area will be restored to its previous natural state.
And to think, all this time, we thought that Moses just led us into the desert. Instead, he led us to...natural gas and shale oil reserves. Must be Divine Providence...
These deposits were found in the Shfela area, near Emek haElah (The Elah Valley), where King David found his round stones and defeated the giant Goliath. Extracting these deposits often require methods, such as hydraulic fracturing ("fracking"), which may impact the environment--it's very controversial in the United States at this time, especially because the chemicals used in this process could contaminate ground water. The beauty of the Israeli deposits is, that there is a deep separation between the shale and the aquifer by "200 meters of impermeable rock." Dr. Harold Vinegar of Israel Energy Initiative speaks here about these new developments (hat tip Elder of Ziyon).
In the video below (Hebrew) Israel Energy Initiatives' Avgad Meiri explains how they have a pilot project to drill in an area about 80 meters, about the size of an average Israeli apartment (Israeli apartments are small), extract through heating, and produce oil from shale rock in a test area the approximate size of an average soccer field. This will be done in an environmentally safe manner, with intense oversight. At the pilot's end, the area will be restored to its previous natural state.
And to think, all this time, we thought that Moses just led us into the desert. Instead, he led us to...natural gas and shale oil reserves. Must be Divine Providence...
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