Israeli company discovers oil at drilling site near the Dead Sea
(From: Stuart Schoenfeld)
Israeli company discovers oil at drilling site near the Dead Sea
By The Associated Press and Haaretz Service
An Israeli company has discovered a small amount of oil at a drilling site near
the Dead Sea, raising hopes that Israel could one day join its regional
neighbors as a petroleum producer.
Initial tests have found that the site would yield between 100 to 150 barrels
daily, said Eli Tannenbaum, geologist for the Ginko oil exploration company.
While this is minuscule by global standards - No. 1 producer Saudi Arabia
produces 9 million barrels a day - Tannenbaum said there are signs that larger
amounts of crude are nearby.
"There is high pressure and there was a flow yesterday, there was a free flow...
All this is evidence that there is oil there," Tannenbaum said.
He said the company also found a hydrocarbon, or oil, trap about 2 kilometers
(1.2 miles) north of the original site. "It appears there will also be oil
there in much higher quantities," Tannenbaum said.
Ginko, a private company, will begin drilling in the second location in the
coming months, he said.
Ginko abandoned the original drilling site in 1997 when oil prices were about
$15-$20 a barrel. It revisited the site recently because oil prices have
quadrupled since then, Tannenbaum said.
Energy expert Amir Mor said hundreds of thousands of abandoned oil fields
worldwide have been revisited in recent years due to the spike in prices, which
can make it profitable to produce even a few hundreds barrels of oil.
However, he said, it was unlikely the new Dead Sea location would yield more
than a few hundred - possibly a few thousand - barrels a day. Strategically,
this is meaningless to Israel - which consumes about 220,000 barrels of oil
daily, Mor added.
Israel has produced only 20 million barrels of oil in the last half-century -
less than what the Saudis produce every three days.