http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3168/israel_the_coming_energy_superpower
Israel’s transformation from a land of milk and honey into a land awash with oil and gas money is under way. When the country’s offshore Tamar field finally started pumping domestic natural gas direct to Haifa on the last day of March 2013, it meant that Israel was no longer in the thrall of its Arab neighbours for gas imports. And it also signalled the beginning of Israel’s rise to energy superpower status.
But don’t take my word for it. Take the words of Russia’s Vladimir Putin or, much more significant, his recent actions. Shaken by the success of the US shale gas revolution and the threat to Russia’s stranglehold on European gas supplies that a prospective eastern Mediterranean supply carries, Putin’s Kremlin has, in recent months, feted Israel as never before.
In February this culminated in Russia’s Gazprom signing a landmark deal giving Russia a major stake in the future distribution of massive Israeli gas resources. It is also likely to be just an entree deal now that Moscow has a place at the Israeli energy table.
In early 2012, Noble Energy, the US partner of the major Israeli energy companies, announced a new find of 1.2 to 1.3 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Tamar prospect. Noble is confident that there may be up to a dozen more such gas discoveries to be made in the Tamar field. Yet the Tamar and Dalit offshore Israeli gas fields are just the beginning.
Others are showing signs of significant quantities of gas, including the Aphrodite 2 field, 100 miles from Haifa. But the enormous Leviathan gas field overshadows them all. Leviathan is estimated to have twice the amount of gas of Tamar and should come online between 2016 and 2018. But Leviathan and Tamar also hold out the further tantalizing prospect of significant amounts of oil.