Israel: A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey and. . . Gas and Oil?!
Is it possible? Is it a miracle? At long last, tiny, seemingly resource-poor Israel has found abundant natural gas and oil resources offshore in the Mediterranean! In 2009, American company Noble Energy based in Houston, Texas, found (in their drilling for the Israeli Delek fuel company) vast reserves of natural gas and then oil, in the sea offshore from Haifa. Original estimates of around 87 billion cubic meters were apparently conservative, and were revised to 850 billion cubic meters, enough to supply Israel's domestic gas requirements for up to thirty-five years. There is the strong possibility that Israel will become--and this is truly miraculous--an exporter of natural gas and maybe even oil. Of course, Lebanon and Hezbollah have already laid claims to some of these discoveries, saying that it is in their territory, and that they will "not allow" Israel to take possession of these oil and gas fields. Well, let's take a look now, shall we? Funny, ...