Post by Ethan / JRyan on Feb 18, 2020 22:05:37 GMT -5
Once again a great find by one of our members.
Israel says will not issue new permits for oil shale production link
This goes along with what I have been saying. It is tough to even drill there, yet companies do. The Environmental folks play a much bigger part in Israel than the USA.
The Israeli public says no to fracking link
Hence why the search is on for conventional oil only!
Israel's Environment Ministry Calls to Halt Oil Production: Shale Oil and Fracking Too Dangerous link
Israel says will not issue new permits for oil shale production link
FEBRUARY 18, 2020 / 5:03 AM / UPDATED 16 HOURS AGO
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel said on Tuesday it will not issue new licenses for oil shale exploration and production as it moves towards cleaner energy sources.
The decision was made due to concerns over the environmental impact and ecological footprint of oil shale projects, Israel’s energy and environmental protection ministries said on Tuesday.
The energy ministry also said it will not extend the license for oil shale production for Rotem Amfert, a unit of Israel Chemicals, at its Mishor Rotem site beyond May 2021.
Two other licenses that have already been issued will be reexamined base on environmental criteria, the ministry said.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel said on Tuesday it will not issue new licenses for oil shale exploration and production as it moves towards cleaner energy sources.
The decision was made due to concerns over the environmental impact and ecological footprint of oil shale projects, Israel’s energy and environmental protection ministries said on Tuesday.
The energy ministry also said it will not extend the license for oil shale production for Rotem Amfert, a unit of Israel Chemicals, at its Mishor Rotem site beyond May 2021.
Two other licenses that have already been issued will be reexamined base on environmental criteria, the ministry said.
This goes along with what I have been saying. It is tough to even drill there, yet companies do. The Environmental folks play a much bigger part in Israel than the USA.
The Israeli public says no to fracking link
August 29, 2016
In September 2014 an Israeli government planning committee delivered a remarkable decision: it rejected a pilot project for non-conventional oil exploration in the country’s Adulam region located between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, a pastoral rural area rich in biblical archeology with a strong eco-tourism sector.
The company that had submitted the request, Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI), had planned to use an untested technology called “In Situ Thermal Recovery” to produce oil by heating shale rock to temperatures as high as 950 degrees Fahrenheit. This releases organic matter known as kerogen, a compound that eventually transforms organic matter into oil and gas.
The committee’s decision was a major victory for Israel’s environmentalists, and a fatal blow for the IEI. IEI had argued that since the project would operate underground, it would leave a minimal ecological footprint, and water resources would not be endangered because of an impermeable rock layer protecting them. However, the committee remained unconvinced, and its final decision determined that the technology posed a critical environmental risk.
The real winners here were the local activists whose health, environment and communities had come under direct threat by the proposed IEI project. Their media-savvy campaign presence has compared the conflict to the biblical confrontation between David and Goliath; the project location was in the same area where the diminutive David emerged victorious over the giant Goliath.
The local community’s victory was an empowering experience for other communities, as well, demonstrating that corporations intent on extracting natural resources in disregard of the impacts on the environment and health of local communities can be stopped by a well organized group of dedicated citizens.
But while the celebrations for the Adulam victory were at their height, another government planning committee, this time in the northern part of Israel, approved the request of IEI’s sister corporation, Afek Oil & Gas, for exploratory drilling in the Golan Heights.
While Afek is officially promoting the project as conventional drilling, Afek officials have admitted that the project does entail non-conventional drilling. Moreover, community activists are convinced that the company intends to use fracking during the explorations, and that fracking has probably already taken place.
The presence of chemicals stored at the drilling sites (fracking requires extensive use of chemicals in order to clean, widen, and keep open cracks in the rock, releasing the hydrocarbons) coupled with the refusal of government officials and Afek to release information on these chemicals and the company’s declared need to extend the drilling in order to reach what it claims is a rich layer of hydrocarbons, substantiate these claims by activists.
This has raised an alarm among local communities determined to ward off what they are convinced will be an ecological and health disaster. They are particularly concerned over contamination of the area’s water resources: the Golan Heights is marked by extreme water sensitivity with high quality aquifers as well as biodiversity-rich streams that feed into the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s main surface drinking water source and only fresh water lake. Another source of worry beyond the impact of Afek’s project on water quality is the massive quantities of water needed for fracking.
Moreover, local communities do not want oil pipelines running through or near their communities, nor do they wish for oil and gas trucks traversing their narrow, winding, country roads, already congested by much-wanted tourists.
Then there is the threat of earthquakes: the oil drilling license area is located on the rim of the great Syria-African Rift and is crossed by geologic faults and cracks. These faults and cracks provide potential pathways for pollutants. Coupled with normally occurring tectonic activity, this increases the potential for great intensification of earthquakes due to drilling and fracking activities, as experienced in Alberta, Canada, and in Oklahoma and Texas in the United States.
And all this leads to climate change. Environmentalists vehemently oppose these projects since they increase Israel’s dependence on fossil fuels and deflect from government policy on decreasing Israel’s greenhouse gas emissions.
IEI and Afek Oil & Gas are subsidiaries of Genie Oil & Gas Ltd. (GOGAS), a New Jersey corporation with headquarters in Newark that operates in Israel through these two subsidiaries.
Genie Oil & Gas is a subsidiary of Genie Energy Ltd., which was spun off in 2001 by IDT, the telecommunications company founded by Howard Jonas in 1990. Genie Energy Ltd. is a holding company for energy related businesses including Genie Oil & Gas, which is developing oil and shales reserves in Colorado, Israel and Mongolia.
In Israel, IEI and Afek have built their PR campaigns on making the country energy-independent, hyping what they define as Israel’s huge reserves of oil shale and gleefully declaring that extracting oil and gas from these reserves could transform the country into a world energy power. But as pointed by Afek’s CEO himself, while approximately 530 wells have been drilled since the country’s establishment in 1948, commercial production of fossil fuels remains elusive.
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.
The burning question is: do people have the right to say no to these corporations that come into their communities creating these environmental and health risks? In Israel, communities are proving that they do have the right to decide. As documented in Josh Fox’s epic documentary, Gaslands, fracking is tearing apart communities across the United States, contaminating well water, polluting the air, and making people sick.
The oil and gas companies retort that there is no evidence to support the claims of the anti-fracking forces. But the Israeli public isn’t buying their excuses and is fighting tooth and nail to prevent these companies from operating in their communities. Communities together with environmental organizations are fending off attempts by US companies to copy and paste the US paradigm of non-conventional fossil fuel drilling in Israel.
So investors beware: this current venture for oil and gas exploration in the Golan Heights will in all likelihood go the way of its sister corporation, IEI, in losing its battle for unconventional drilling in Israel.
In September 2014 an Israeli government planning committee delivered a remarkable decision: it rejected a pilot project for non-conventional oil exploration in the country’s Adulam region located between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, a pastoral rural area rich in biblical archeology with a strong eco-tourism sector.
The company that had submitted the request, Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI), had planned to use an untested technology called “In Situ Thermal Recovery” to produce oil by heating shale rock to temperatures as high as 950 degrees Fahrenheit. This releases organic matter known as kerogen, a compound that eventually transforms organic matter into oil and gas.
The committee’s decision was a major victory for Israel’s environmentalists, and a fatal blow for the IEI. IEI had argued that since the project would operate underground, it would leave a minimal ecological footprint, and water resources would not be endangered because of an impermeable rock layer protecting them. However, the committee remained unconvinced, and its final decision determined that the technology posed a critical environmental risk.
The real winners here were the local activists whose health, environment and communities had come under direct threat by the proposed IEI project. Their media-savvy campaign presence has compared the conflict to the biblical confrontation between David and Goliath; the project location was in the same area where the diminutive David emerged victorious over the giant Goliath.
The local community’s victory was an empowering experience for other communities, as well, demonstrating that corporations intent on extracting natural resources in disregard of the impacts on the environment and health of local communities can be stopped by a well organized group of dedicated citizens.
But while the celebrations for the Adulam victory were at their height, another government planning committee, this time in the northern part of Israel, approved the request of IEI’s sister corporation, Afek Oil & Gas, for exploratory drilling in the Golan Heights.
While Afek is officially promoting the project as conventional drilling, Afek officials have admitted that the project does entail non-conventional drilling. Moreover, community activists are convinced that the company intends to use fracking during the explorations, and that fracking has probably already taken place.
The presence of chemicals stored at the drilling sites (fracking requires extensive use of chemicals in order to clean, widen, and keep open cracks in the rock, releasing the hydrocarbons) coupled with the refusal of government officials and Afek to release information on these chemicals and the company’s declared need to extend the drilling in order to reach what it claims is a rich layer of hydrocarbons, substantiate these claims by activists.
This has raised an alarm among local communities determined to ward off what they are convinced will be an ecological and health disaster. They are particularly concerned over contamination of the area’s water resources: the Golan Heights is marked by extreme water sensitivity with high quality aquifers as well as biodiversity-rich streams that feed into the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s main surface drinking water source and only fresh water lake. Another source of worry beyond the impact of Afek’s project on water quality is the massive quantities of water needed for fracking.
Moreover, local communities do not want oil pipelines running through or near their communities, nor do they wish for oil and gas trucks traversing their narrow, winding, country roads, already congested by much-wanted tourists.
Then there is the threat of earthquakes: the oil drilling license area is located on the rim of the great Syria-African Rift and is crossed by geologic faults and cracks. These faults and cracks provide potential pathways for pollutants. Coupled with normally occurring tectonic activity, this increases the potential for great intensification of earthquakes due to drilling and fracking activities, as experienced in Alberta, Canada, and in Oklahoma and Texas in the United States.
And all this leads to climate change. Environmentalists vehemently oppose these projects since they increase Israel’s dependence on fossil fuels and deflect from government policy on decreasing Israel’s greenhouse gas emissions.
IEI and Afek Oil & Gas are subsidiaries of Genie Oil & Gas Ltd. (GOGAS), a New Jersey corporation with headquarters in Newark that operates in Israel through these two subsidiaries.
Genie Oil & Gas is a subsidiary of Genie Energy Ltd., which was spun off in 2001 by IDT, the telecommunications company founded by Howard Jonas in 1990. Genie Energy Ltd. is a holding company for energy related businesses including Genie Oil & Gas, which is developing oil and shales reserves in Colorado, Israel and Mongolia.
In Israel, IEI and Afek have built their PR campaigns on making the country energy-independent, hyping what they define as Israel’s huge reserves of oil shale and gleefully declaring that extracting oil and gas from these reserves could transform the country into a world energy power. But as pointed by Afek’s CEO himself, while approximately 530 wells have been drilled since the country’s establishment in 1948, commercial production of fossil fuels remains elusive.
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.
The burning question is: do people have the right to say no to these corporations that come into their communities creating these environmental and health risks? In Israel, communities are proving that they do have the right to decide. As documented in Josh Fox’s epic documentary, Gaslands, fracking is tearing apart communities across the United States, contaminating well water, polluting the air, and making people sick.
The oil and gas companies retort that there is no evidence to support the claims of the anti-fracking forces. But the Israeli public isn’t buying their excuses and is fighting tooth and nail to prevent these companies from operating in their communities. Communities together with environmental organizations are fending off attempts by US companies to copy and paste the US paradigm of non-conventional fossil fuel drilling in Israel.
So investors beware: this current venture for oil and gas exploration in the Golan Heights will in all likelihood go the way of its sister corporation, IEI, in losing its battle for unconventional drilling in Israel.
Hence why the search is on for conventional oil only!
Israel's Environment Ministry Calls to Halt Oil Production: Shale Oil and Fracking Too Dangerous link
Mar 24, 2019 9:39 PM
Planned projects will lead to more pollution and earthquakes – and defeat plans to end the use of fossil fuels by 2013, says environmental watchdog.
The Environmental Protection Ministry has called to completely halt all new plans to produce oil in Israel in order to reduce pollution and the emission of greenhouse gases. This comes in response to recent plans to promote oil production from hydraulic fracking and oil shale rock by the National Infrastructure, Energy and Water Ministry.
A team of experts prepared an opinion on using hydraulic fracking to search for and produce oil and natural gas in Israel, which was recently submitted to the Energy Ministry. This method is used to increase the flow of oil and gas by injecting liquids that create fractures in the rock layer.
The experts said the method can be used, but noted that its potential is limited and can be used mainly on the Golan Heights, the Hula Valley, the area around the Dead Sea and the southern Coastal Plain. The Energy Ministry recently gave its approval in principle to produce oil from the oil shale rocks in the area of the Rotem Plain in the Negev.
Last week, Dr. Ram Almog, the head of national project planning in the Environmental Protection Ministry, informed the Energy Ministry of its opposition to producing oil and gas by hydraulic fracking – or other methods.
Almog said in his letter that in recent years Israel has been promoting steps to reduce the use of fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas). The use of coal-fired power plants has been reduced and a decision has been made to discontinue use of coal entirely by 2030, he added.
“Establishing the planning and regulatory infrastructure for producing oil in Israel in general, and using hydraulic fracking in particular, contradicts government policy and does not align with the government’s intention to be part of the global trend to move to a low-carbon economy,” wrote Almog. The existence of natural resources in Israel is important for its social and economic strength, but not at any price, so the Energy Ministry must act to discontinue the use of fossil fuels entirely, added Almog.
As for hydraulic fracking, Almog noted that it would damage open spaces because it utilizes short-term drilling and as a result requires numerous drilling sites, with their accompanying infrastructure. This method endangers groundwater and could cause earthquakes, as has happened in other countries. Using the oil in a refinery at a later stage also has environmental consequences, mainly air pollution, he added.
The Greenpeace environmental organization also opposes continued oil production in Israel, including hydraulic fracking. Dr. Jonathan Aikhenbaum of Greenpeace in Israel said: “The Energy Ministry is playing both sides. On one hand, it’s promoting the use of renewable energy and is truly making sincere efforts. On the other hand, it continues to encourage the use of fossil fuels by expanding the search for oil and gas at sea, and the use of oil shale and fracking. These are methods that cause environmental pollution and are also less efficient energetically. Their use is even more problematic environmentally in a small and densely populated country like Israel.”
The Energy Ministry’s said in response: “In order to allow a diverse mix of fuels to reduce dependence on imports, the ministry is examining different ways of producing energy. The matter of producing oil by hydraulic fracking has been examined by a committee of experts – and an interministerial steering committee with members from the Energy Ministry, Planning Administration, Health Ministry, Environmental Protection Ministry, Water Authority and the umbrella organizations of environmental organizations. The committee determined that the Energy Ministry’s policy and regulation provide a suitable solution for the use of this technology, under the supervision of the ministry.” The Energy Ministry also said it is continuing to examine the conditions required to carry out fracking.
“No connection exists between activities to produce oil and the emission of greenhouse gases and air pollution – while transporting oil can cause more emissions that the production itself. Moreover, Israel’s fuel basket is not under the authority of the [interministerial] committee,” said the Energy Ministry
Planned projects will lead to more pollution and earthquakes – and defeat plans to end the use of fossil fuels by 2013, says environmental watchdog.
The Environmental Protection Ministry has called to completely halt all new plans to produce oil in Israel in order to reduce pollution and the emission of greenhouse gases. This comes in response to recent plans to promote oil production from hydraulic fracking and oil shale rock by the National Infrastructure, Energy and Water Ministry.
A team of experts prepared an opinion on using hydraulic fracking to search for and produce oil and natural gas in Israel, which was recently submitted to the Energy Ministry. This method is used to increase the flow of oil and gas by injecting liquids that create fractures in the rock layer.
The experts said the method can be used, but noted that its potential is limited and can be used mainly on the Golan Heights, the Hula Valley, the area around the Dead Sea and the southern Coastal Plain. The Energy Ministry recently gave its approval in principle to produce oil from the oil shale rocks in the area of the Rotem Plain in the Negev.
Last week, Dr. Ram Almog, the head of national project planning in the Environmental Protection Ministry, informed the Energy Ministry of its opposition to producing oil and gas by hydraulic fracking – or other methods.
Almog said in his letter that in recent years Israel has been promoting steps to reduce the use of fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas). The use of coal-fired power plants has been reduced and a decision has been made to discontinue use of coal entirely by 2030, he added.
“Establishing the planning and regulatory infrastructure for producing oil in Israel in general, and using hydraulic fracking in particular, contradicts government policy and does not align with the government’s intention to be part of the global trend to move to a low-carbon economy,” wrote Almog. The existence of natural resources in Israel is important for its social and economic strength, but not at any price, so the Energy Ministry must act to discontinue the use of fossil fuels entirely, added Almog.
As for hydraulic fracking, Almog noted that it would damage open spaces because it utilizes short-term drilling and as a result requires numerous drilling sites, with their accompanying infrastructure. This method endangers groundwater and could cause earthquakes, as has happened in other countries. Using the oil in a refinery at a later stage also has environmental consequences, mainly air pollution, he added.
The Greenpeace environmental organization also opposes continued oil production in Israel, including hydraulic fracking. Dr. Jonathan Aikhenbaum of Greenpeace in Israel said: “The Energy Ministry is playing both sides. On one hand, it’s promoting the use of renewable energy and is truly making sincere efforts. On the other hand, it continues to encourage the use of fossil fuels by expanding the search for oil and gas at sea, and the use of oil shale and fracking. These are methods that cause environmental pollution and are also less efficient energetically. Their use is even more problematic environmentally in a small and densely populated country like Israel.”
The Energy Ministry’s said in response: “In order to allow a diverse mix of fuels to reduce dependence on imports, the ministry is examining different ways of producing energy. The matter of producing oil by hydraulic fracking has been examined by a committee of experts – and an interministerial steering committee with members from the Energy Ministry, Planning Administration, Health Ministry, Environmental Protection Ministry, Water Authority and the umbrella organizations of environmental organizations. The committee determined that the Energy Ministry’s policy and regulation provide a suitable solution for the use of this technology, under the supervision of the ministry.” The Energy Ministry also said it is continuing to examine the conditions required to carry out fracking.
“No connection exists between activities to produce oil and the emission of greenhouse gases and air pollution – while transporting oil can cause more emissions that the production itself. Moreover, Israel’s fuel basket is not under the authority of the [interministerial] committee,” said the Energy Ministry