Israel’s Future as an Energy Exporter

Will Israel become a major exporter of natural gas in the near future? Most likely. How about an oil exporter? Maybe. Is there any chance of Israel joining OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries)? With Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Venezuela on the membership committee, probably not.

But the reality is that Israel has already made the largest natural gas discovery – ever – in the Mediterranean and the largest discovery worldwide in 2009. Of course those figures were based on the initial Tamar gas field reserve estimates of 5 trillion (that’s ‘trillion’) cubic feet. Since then the Tamar estimates have jumped to 8.7 trillion cubic feet. But wait, there’s more! The Leviathan field, discovered after Tamar, is estimated to hold an astonishing 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The piece of news offshore operator Noble Energy isn’t ready to make too public yet is that they believe that underneath the natural gas fields, there could be oil. That’s the story offshore.

Onshore, Givot Olam claims the field below their Meged #5 well may hold 1.5 billion barrels of oil (we’ll find out how real that estimate is next month). By the way, the Meged #5 has been pumping oil in the midst of the latest arguments over how big the field may or may not be. Zion Oil & Gas, just yesterday, spudded (began drilling) their Ma’anit-Joseph #3 well. This is Zion’s third attempt to discover commercial quantities of oil in the Ma’anit structure. The first two wells were frustratingly close; they actually extracted oil from the Ma’anit-Rehoboth #2 test well. Zion isn’t going into the Ma’anit-Joseph #3 blind; based on results from the first two wells and their best science, this well will be at the location and depth they need to be to hit commercial oil.

Bottom Line: Israel is not waiting for a major hydrocarbon discovery – it’s already happened – the largest natural gas discovery worldwide in 2009 (of course that was when they believed they only had 5 trillion cubic feet in the Tamar field and before the Leviathan discovery). The Tamar field is 90 kilometers (56 miles) offshore and Leviathan is 130 kilometers (81 miles) out to sea. Producing the offshore gas (bringing to market by building pipelines to onshore facilities)  will take a few years (up to five). But it will happen. It’s a pretty good bet that all of Israel’s domestic natural gas needs (that includes electricity) will be fully supplied and that more than a few European and the Japanese households (at least) will be heating their morning tea with Israeli natural gas in the next decade. Up until 2009 nobody imagined that Israel could supply her own needs, let alone become a world exporter of natural gas. In 2019 it will be a major Israeli export.

Is oil far behind? I don’t think so. If oil and gas is discovered onshore in the near future, it will most likely beat the offshore gas to market. If a lot of oil is discovered – beyond Israel’s domestic needs – oil is much easier (and quicker) to export than natural gas.

Little old Israel, a major energy exporter – imagine that! Of  course Israel has accomplished a lot of things in the last sixty-plus years the world never imagined. That may be because the world doesn’t know it’s Bible as well as it should. About 2,700 years ago Israel (the northern kingdom) was decimated by her enemies (ancestors of some of the same enemies Israel has today) and many in Israel were taken as captives back to conquering Assyria.  Later the Babylonians conquered Assyria, but Israel remained captives in exile, away from their home land. In this dark time an Israeli living in exile, his name was Yechezk’el,  saw a vision of his people’s future. He saw dry bones coming together to form a nation of people, he saw a wasteland spring to life and become a garden. Yechezk’el’s (we westerners use the name Ezekiel) vision of dry bones became reality on May 14, 1948 when Israel, after 1,900 years of exile, became a nation. In 1948, the Land of Israel wasn’t too different from the ‘wasteland’ Ezekiel saw in his vision. Today the ‘wasteland’ has become a garden.  In Ezekiel’s vision G-d made a promise to the Land of Israel: “I will settle people on you as in the past and will make you prosper more before.” (Ezekiel 36:11)

A nation of people from dry bones … wasteland springing into gardens … a nation in exile for 1,900 years returning to its homeland and prospering today more than in any time in history … imagine that!

Zion Oil & Gas Starts Drilling the Ma’anit-Joseph #3 Well

Dallas, Texas and Caesarea, Israel – August 26, 2010 – Zion Oil & Gas, Inc. (NASDAQ GM: ZN) announced today that drilling operations have begun on its Ma’anit-Joseph #3 well, in its Joseph License area, onshore Northern Israel. The drilling operations are expected to last approximately six months.

Utilizing the 2,000 horsepower drilling rig used to drill Zion’s previous wells, Zion has commenced drilling its Ma’anit-Joseph #3 well, initially towards its secondary target, Triassic age lithology, expected below approximately 10,827 feet (3,300 meters). Zion then plans to continue drilling to its primary target, Permian age lithology, down to a planned total depth below approximately 19,357 feet (5,900 meters).

The rig will operate on a 24-hour basis utilizing two drilling crews on 12-hour shifts. On a continual basis, samples will be collected by Zion’s wellsite geologists, analyzed for both hydrocarbon content and lithology and then stored.

Zion’s Chief Executive Officer, Richard Rinberg, said today, “We are excited to be drilling the Ma’anit-Joseph #3 well and continue to be optimistic about the possibility of recovering hydrocarbons on our license and permit areas, onshore Israel, especially due to the U.S. Geological Survey report, published in April 2010, containing their assessment that there may be 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas in the Levant Basin, as all of Zion’s exploration rights fall within the area of the Levant Basin.”

Givot Olam Meets with Investors

Haaretz August 24, 2010

Givot Olam at investors assembly: Meged-5 is like granting of Torah

Fossil fuel company attempts to allay investor uncertainty with confident claims of oil abundance.

The people at Givot Olam Oil Exploration presumably were tired of being excoriated by investors and the press over the opacity of their announcements, and called a shareholders assembly on the premise of explaining their results at the Meged-5 drill.

Hundreds of investors convened yesterday at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem to hear Tuvia Luskin, the partnership’s geologist, expand on the topic. At the entrance to the building, investors were greeted with a modest holiday present: a jar of the crude oil extracted from the site, and a matching jar of honey.

Luskin and the members of the board of directors were accompanied by legal counsel Arik Harari, whose function was to supervise Luskin, given his penchant for making “forward-looking statements.”

The geologist began the meeting by reviewing the company’s results (in English ), and compared the Meged-5 exploration to the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt.

“For years we were in the dark, with ‘signs of oil’ but no light,” he said. “Meged 5 is like the granting of Torah for us. It’s a revelation.”

Luskin called for patience, however: It will take years to produce the oil, he said.

Production tests at Meged-5, a field by Rosh Ha’ayin, were held at 8 segments, at the end of which Givot stated that it had produced 480 barrels of oil, which disappointed investors relative to expectations.

Last week the partnership’s participation units soared after it stated that the estimated potential of Meged-5 was 1.53 billion barrels. On September 15, the partnership is scheduled to receive a final report from its consultants, detailing how much the segments 1 to 6 are likely to produce, he said.

Luskin counseled shareholders to differentiate between “static oil” found on the site and extractable oil, which isn’t the same thing, he said.

He expanded on how many barrels each segment is believed to contain, and qualified that the estimates would change as testing proceeds. Only after all that will be it possible to begin estimating how much the field could be worth, the geologist said.

One shareholder commented that based on Luskin’s statements, Meged-5 should be able to produce more than 2,000 barrels of oil a day. “Is that really the number?” he inquired. Luskin responded, “You have no patience.”

That said, he himself told the shareholders, “The press tells you that this is just another Heletz [a field in southern Israel that has been eking out miserly amounts of oil since the 1950s.] Pay no attention to them,” Luskin urged. “We have a lot more wells to drill and a lot more oil to produce. We have a lot more to do,” to which Nogah Ben David, director and Jerusalemite businessman, added, “With the help of God.”

1.5 Billion Barrel Oil Discovery in Israel?

News reports out Israel of a 1.5 billion barrel oil discovery lit up websites and news postings yesterday. Israeli oil exploration company Givot Olam announced to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) on Tuesday that, “Production test drilling at Givot Olam’s Meged 5 site near Rosh Ha’ayin indicated it holds 1.525 billion barrels’ worth of oil.” And boy did it start a stir!

Givot Olam stock shot up 69% at one point, before finally settling out at a 19.7% gain … meanwhile trading was suspended and the Israel Securities Authority demanded clarifications of the report from Givot Olam – who didn’t have anything to add.  They said a full report would be available in September.

According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “This is not the first time Givot has issued partial and less than definitive information.” If you visit the Givot Olam website (http://www.givot.co.il/english/index.php) today you’ll read about the 2 billion barrels they “discovered” (but never produced) in 2004.  The truth behind this week’s “discovery” is that their tests don’t show how much oil they can produce or how much the discovery may be worth financially. What they do know is that even if there is 1.5 billion barrels down there, only a small percentage of it is recoverable; estimates range from 10% to 25%.

Givot Olam has been pumping oil mixed with gas and water from the Meged 5 test well for about a week and a half, averaging about 380 barrels per day. Israel consumes 235,000 barrels of oil per day. At the rate the Meged 5 is pumping now the well would supply less than two tenths of one percent of Israel’s daily consumption. If just 10% of Givot Olam’s “discovery” was recoverable (150 million barrels), the Meged 5 would have to maintain its current pace for over a thousand years to harvest the field. Israel burns through 150 million barrels in less than two years.

Haaretz reports: A geophysicist in the field, however, called the most recent announcement “speculative” and said the 1.525 billion figure appeared “exaggerated.”

“The bottom line is that I want to see the well’s capacity of barrels per day over time,” he said. “How much the drilling site can produce – that’s what will answer questions regarding its economic viability. Regarding the reserves, I don’t think they can be assessed at the moment. It’s a very rough estimate and everything gets into the range of probabilities.”

That’s what the geophysicists in Israel (the guys who know) are saying. It’s the same thing they told me after Givot Olam announced its 2 billion barrel “discovery” in 2004.

Bottom Line: Givot Olam’s announcement of a 1.5 billion barrel discovery is highly speculative and most likely exaggerated. A “discovery” doesn’t mean how many barrels a company can actually commercially produce (2004′s 2 billion barrel “discovery” commercially produced exactly zilch). We’ll need to wait until Givot Olam submits their definitive report in September and watch production on the Meged 5. Yesterday’s announcement created a lot of hoopla, but nobody, including Givot Olam, knows the substantive reality of the “discovery” at this point.

But that didn’t stop some Israeli news agencies and  Christian websites (Joel Rosenberg’s included) from running the headline “1.5 BILLION BARRELS OF OIL DISCOVERED IN ISRAEL” with few, if any, facts to back up the headline.

So why am I raining on everyone’s parade? Here’s why: the truth. There’s nobody that believes Israel will discover oil in a big way more than I do (except maybe John Brown of Zion Oil and Tovia Luskin of Givot Olam). And I believe the Bible (Torah) points to that discovery (so do John Brown and Tovia Luskin). But sensational headlines taken from unsubstantiated announcements don’t forward the search. When sensational headlines (like the 2 billion barrel “discovery” in 2004) don’ t pass the test of reality, they only disappoint the folks who believed them in the first place and hurt the credibility of those who ran the headline. That  said, here are the facts:

• The Bible (Torah) states that Jacob (Israel) would “suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock.” (Deut 32:13) Of Joseph (Ephraim and Manasseh) it states: “Blessed of the LORD be his land, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath, And for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the moon, And for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills, And for the precious things of the earth and fulness thereof …. (Deut. 33:13-16).  That Zebulun and Issachar “shall suck of the abundance of the seas, and of treasures hid in the sand.” (Deut 33:19) And that Asher would “dip his foot in oil.” (Duet 33:24)
• Tovia Luskin and John Brown founded their oil exploration companies based on their belief that scripture points to a major oil discovery in Israel.
• Zion Oil & Gas and Givot Olam have proven that oil exists deep below the territories the Bible (Torah) said it would be found.   Givot Olam has pumped more than 3,000 barrels of it in the last week and a half.
• Serious geological studies by the Geophysical Institute in Israel and the US Geological Survey have backed up Luskin’s and Brown’s belief by stating that they estimate a mean of 1.7 billion barrels of oil and 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are recoverable in the Levant Basin, which includes onshore and offshore Israel.
• Enough natural gas to supply all of Israel’s needs into the foreseeable future has already been discovered off the coast of Northern Israel.

The facts are enough. Israel has discovered huge quantities of natural gas, they’ve discovered oil right where the Bible said it would be, and I believe Israel is on the cusp of discovering major quantities of producible oil, both onshore and offshore – enough to supply them into the foreseeable future.  It’s happening now, but it hasn’t happened yet. The prophecy of Israel’s oil, I believe, is being fulfilled before our eyes, but it hasn’t been fulfilled yet. Misleading headlines aside, Givot Olam’s discovery is a part of that fulfillment. I’ll report the facts to you as we see them unfold. In the meantime here’s a more balanced article on the subject from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/business/givot-olam-meged-has-1-5b-barrels-of-oil-1.308683

Steve Spillman