Countries like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Iran have enormous political power because of the oil they can provide to Europe or to China, and because of the monopoly power that they have, as members of OPEC, to embargo the supply of oil to anyone who doesn’t toe their political line. For those who understand the geopolitical importance of oil, the answer is obvious: oil is a strategic commodity without which the industrialized world could not operate. The obvious question people have raised is why, with an enormous abundance of natural gas and solar power, Israel should even bother to develop these “shale oil” and “oil shale” resources-however much oil they may contain. They have estimated that there is as much as 250 billion barrels of oil in place in the Shfela, much of which could be recovered economically using these methods… nearly as much oil as in all of Saudi Arabia!
#Will the golan need to be fracked to recover oil free#
Instead, the developers of the Shfela Basin site have devised an entirely new suite of far more benign technologies that would heat the rock (“oil shale”) gradually over a period of years to free the hydrocarbons. Meanwhile, the site in the center of the country (in the Shfela Basin) contains fossil fuels in a different form altogether: hydrocarbons bound to the shale rock.Īlthough some opponents of development there have raised a cry against “fracking” at this site, the reality is that is “fracking” is not being contemplated, nor would it be useful in freeing these hydrocarbons. Specifically, the Golan site is thought to contain predominantly oil. Moreover, rather than containing predominantly natural gas (like Israel’s offshore fields or like the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania and New York State)-both these onshore sites are likely to deliver a quite different and distinct mix of fossil fuels that will be of particular importance for fueling transportation, rather than for generating electricity. Instead, when people speak of Israel’s shale they are referring to two onshore sites, one in the center of Israel near Beit Shemesh (the “Shfela Basin”) and the other in the Golan.
To understand that need, it first is crucial to clarify that, while the undersea sandstone formations in which Israel’s gas is entrapped are overlain with shale, these offshore sites are not what are meant when people talk about Israel’s “shale” deposits-particularly since Israel’s offshore gas is being recovered by “conventional” means rather than using more complex technologies usually needed for producing fossil fuels from shale. Given these enormous offshore natural gas resources and the solar energy projects that are being pursued, why, then, does it remain important for Israel to develop its shale resources?