Sunday, June 12, 2011

this is good news Israel oil exporter rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg

ny Israel, long dependent on outsiders for its energy needs, is poised to become a major exporter of oil.

That's according to Lawrence Solomon, writing in the Financial Post.

The new energy order is founded on rock – the shale that traps vast stores of energy in deposits around the world. One of the largest deposits – 250 billion barrels of oil in Israel’s Shfela basin, comparable to Saudi Arabia’s entire reserves of 260 billion barrels of oil – has until now been unexploited, partly because the technology required has been expensive, mostly because the multinational oil companies that have the technology fear offending Muslims.

“None of the major oil companies are willing to do business in Israel because they don’t want to be cut off from the Mideast supply of oil,” explains Howard Jonas, CEO of IDT, the U.S. company that owns the Shfela concession through its subsidiary, Israel Energy Initiatives. Jonas, an ardent Zionist, considers the Shfela deposit merely a beginning: “We believe that under Israel is more oil than under Saudi Arabia. There may be as much as half a trillion barrels.”

To draw oil from the rock, Jonas and his team have recruited an all-star team of oil executives.

Politically, Israel as an oil exporter would have dramatic consequences. Just imagine for a moment if Europe and the rest of the world were dependent on tiny Israel for oil. Surely, the double standards and isolation would cease in an instant.

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