Givot/Genie/Zion - Connections?

Despite the company’s repeated reminders that its permits only allow for exploratory drilling and prohibit nonconventional oil production, Gilboa asserted that the type of oil found in the wells would likely prove to be “tight” and necessitate nonconventional fracking methods. Afek has long maintained, however, that the oil found in the Golan is just as likely conventional as tight and would not necessarily require fracking for extraction.

Last month Afek, an Israeli subsidiary of Genie Energy, a US oil company, announced that it had found considerable reserves of oil under the Golan. Genie’s chief geologist in Israel, Yuval Bartov, said the company believed the reservoir had the “potential of billions of barrels”.

International law experts say any proceeds from such a find in the Golan should revert to Syria, but Israel has so far indicated it will ignore its legal obligations.

The Israeli energy and water ministry has licensed Afek to drill 10 experimental wells over three years in a 400-square kilometre area, about a third of the Golan’s total territory.

This is the perfect time to make such a move. The most painful response you can give the Iranians is to recognize Israel’s Golan sovereignty — with an American statement, a presidential proclamation, enshrined [in law].”

Though the abundant fresh water in the Golan Heights is of crucial importance to Israel, the Golan’s value grew sharply following the discovery of a major oil reserve in the area, estimated to contain “billions of barrels” of crude oil that could turn Israel – which currently imports the vast majority of its fuel – into a net oil exporter. Yet, because the Golan Heights are internationally recognized as being under occupation and not an official part of Israel, the commercial extraction and export of this vast oil reserve cannot go forward — until this status changes. As a result, only exploratory wells have been drilled, mostly by a division of Genie Energy Co., a U.S.-based oil company connected to well-known figures such as Rupert Murdoch, Jacob Rothschild, and Dick Cheney.

In accordance with an energy cooperation framework agreement signed in late January, Russia will have exclusive rights to produce oil and gas in Syria.

In 2004, geologists confirm Triassic oil and gas fields are indeed in the same region.

Now, Zion Oil holds the Megiddo-Jezreel Petroleum Exploration License that comprises approximately 99,000 acres, and is proposing to drill about 26 miles south of the recent Genie oil discovery.

On 6 November, Zion Oil announced the public release of a resource assessment report, with estimated prospective recoverable oil volumes ranging from 20.7 million barrels to 234.6 million barrels of oil. If a discovery is made, the “best estimate” for recoverable hydrocarbons is at 69.7 million barrels.

Our journey to the center of the earth began in 1981 when Mekorot, the Israeli Water Company, drilled a routine well in Ein Sid, which is in the Southern Golan. The drilling was not successful. The drillers reported that they reached only dirty water that was unfit for drinking and immediately stopped the drilling process. The question was – what was the reason for this dirty water?

A quick analysis showed that natural oil emanating from the earth was, in fact, the cause of the “dirt”. Despite the sensational nature of the finding, the media did not really pay any attention to it.

Thirty years after that “failed” water drilling attempt, our experts performed a new analysis of the data gathered during the process of the original water drilling. The evidence found in the subsoil samples taken during that drilling reinforced the evaluation that hidden on the Golan was one of the largest natural oil reserves in the Middle East.

The Afek Company’s experts, who have decades of experience at the forefront of the global oil industry, delved deeper. Geological models were constructed, over a period of many long months, to examine the subsoil heat, the various layers deep underground, the electrical conductivity and more. Their findings reinforced the initial assumptions concerning a large natural oil deposit on the Golan.

Although the company reports finding evidence of hydrocarbons and/or gas in all the sites drilled so far (some in the form of liquid oil), the presence of water and the low permeability in the hydrocarbon and gas carrying strata made it difficult to extract viable amounts of liquid oil and gas under current permit restrictions. Reviewing its data, Afek has already announced that it does not plan to resume actual drilling before the Q4 2016, Q1 2017.

"Atid will bring together an experienced operations team, international partners who will provide additional technical expertise in the planning and execution of projects, and a high capability drilling rig based in Israel and equipped to operate at depths up to 2,000 m," Rochwarger concluded.

Atid is expected to spud its first exploration well in early March for Afek Oil and Gas, the Genie Energy subsidiary that is conducting an oil and gas exploratory program in the Golan Heights.

"We remain optimistic given the results to date," Genie Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Howard Jonas said in a statement. "We are now working diligently to determine the production costs and total quantity of the resource."

The company's Israeli subsidiary, Afek Oil and Gas, drilled into a column of reserves about 1,150 feet thick, about 10 times larger than the global average.

The Levant covers a large onshore area in the East Mediterranean region including Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Israel. The Triassic carbonate is already a proven reservoir and play in the region, with several oil and gas fields having been discovered in Triassic carbonate reservoirs in the Triassic Basin in Syria. Petroleum exploration in the southern margin of the Triassic Basin has also found important oil discoveries in onshore Israel and the occupied Golan Heights. In this article we look at those discoveries and consider exploration by Petrel Resources in northern Jordan, which revealed a similar possible carbonate build-up anomaly in the Triassic carbonate formations in the East Safawi block, west of the Risha gas field in north-east Jordan.

In 2002 Zion Oil & Gas Inc. began developing the Triassic reef play in the Ma’anit Licence area in northern Israel, bordering the north-west of the Palestinian West Bank Territory. It was targeting a buried platform or barrier reef potentially sealed by Upper Triassic and Lower Jurassic shales and anhydrites. With this in mind, in 2005 the company drilled Ma’anit-1 on the Ma’anit structure and drilling breaks and shows of hydrocarbons were recorded from 3,650m to the total depth of 4,570m, but it was determined that the well was not commercially viable. In 2009, Zion drilled the Ma’anit-Rehoboth-2 well in the same area and small quantities of crude oil were produced, but the company determined that commercial quantities of hydrocarbons were not present, and later the same year some evidence of oil was seen in a well in a neighbouring licence, targeting the same play.

The recent Upper Triassic oil discoveries in central Israel and the Golan Heights and the Triassic section in northern Jordan all contain intervals of reservoir quality beneath the evaporite-salt horizons of the Abu Ruweis Formation and its equivalents in Israel, the latter providing a regional seal and some protection against reservoir breaching. Unfortunately, the current seismic interpretation maps in northern Jordan do not show well-defined undrilled structural closure at Triassic levels and further work is needed in this area.