Natural Gas is the sensible energy source for the future. It’s cheap, clean, abundant, and you can’t run a wind or solar fame without it. And Israel just put its massive Tamar Offshore Natural Gas field online, which “holds an estimated 8.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.”
Related:
The gas from Tamar is expected to help meet Israel’s energy needs for the next 20 years, Channel 2 said, and will save the economy some NIS 13 billion (some $3.5 billion) per year. Its ahead-of-schedule use will also save Israeli citizens some cash — lowering a planned rise in electricity costs to 6 percent, less than originally planned.
“This is an ‘energy independence day’ for Israel,” said Energy and Water Minister Silvan Shalom. “This breakthrough is the harbinger of the foray of additional private companies” into the Israeli energy market, he added.
Hamas has promised to blow it all up, but the Israelis have considered that likelihood. They have deployed a sea-faring version of Iron Dome.
Iron Dome is a mobile all-weather air defense system developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries. The system is designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets and artillery shells fired from distances of 4 kilometres to 70 kilometres away and whose trajectory would take them to an Israeli populated area.
Here’s a look at that.
Introducing C-Dome missile defense system. Why does it look familiar? pic.twitter.com/KQjcWlqpjr
— Lt. Col. (R) Peter Lerner (@LTCPeterLerner) May 18, 2016
The Tamar field is not alone. The larger Leviathan offshore field is also online.
Leviathan, which boasts an estimated 16 to 18 trillion cubic feet of gas, is expected to go online in 2016, the approximate time when exports are expected to begin.
It has signed a deal to build a pipeline that will bring the product Cyprus, Greece, Italy, and yes, Europe. A move that could move the needle by giving Europe another source of energy outside Russia.
The non-Soleimani news that rocked the Middle East involved natural gas. On January 2, Greece, Israel and Cyprus signed an agreement to build a pipeline to transport natural gas 1,300 miles from Israel’s Leviathan natural gas field in the Mediterranean first to Greece, then to Italy, and from Italy into the heart of Europe. Scheduled for completion in 2025, the “EastMed pipeline” ultimately might provide 4% of Europe’s natural gas imports. It also would compete with two pipelines being built by Russia, the NordStream 2 pipeline in the Baltic Sea to Germany, and the TurkStream project from Russia to Turkey.
Israel is also already natural gas to Jordan and Egypt (since the first of the year). Think about that. Israel as an independent energy superpower with increased influence in Europe and the Middle East. A Democracy, not controlled by Arabs, Mullahs, or tied to terrorist groups or a supremacy ideology.
The geo-politics are still dicey, to be sure, but cheap energy buys a lot of goodwill. It the terrorists don’t keep blowing it up, the times they could be a-changing.
Image: Times of Israel
