Thursday, April 07, 2011

Black Gold - in Jewish Territory

Israelis have this grievance against Moses. They complain, "He took us through the desert 40 years, to bring us to the only place in the Middle East without a drop of oil!" Arab neighbors have more than enough; Israel ends up with nothing!

Golda Meir's joke aside, Israel recently made discoveries of oil and natural gas in its coastal waters. Unless they give it away, like they did last time to Egypt, in exchange for a piece of paper, the Jewish state has a promising future of energy independence.

You think they can join alongside Iran and Iraq as a member of OPEC?

Dr. Harold Vinegar, chief scientist at Royal Dutch oil company Shell, now scientific director of the Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI), believes Israel's discovery of oil reserves amounts to an awful lot!

IEI is working on an ambitious project to extract oil and natural gas from oil shale in a 238 square kilometers area, off Shfela Basin, Southwest of Jerusalem. As for concern of pollution emissions, he says, "Our techniques are cleaner than those currently used elsewhere because the oil will be separated from the shale rock 300 meters below ground. This allows us to greatly reduce the amount of water consumed."

According to Dr. Vinegar, Israel has the second largest deposits of oil shale in the world outside the United States. "We believe it has the equivalent of 250 billion barrels of oil. To put this in context, there are proven reserves of 260 billion barrels of oil in Saudi Arabia." If IEI claims become a reality, Israel will become one of the richest countries in the world.

Besides other indications the Era of Final & Ultimate Redemption is almost here, this one may well confirm the verse, (Shmos 13, 18), "... and the Israelites left Egypt [exile] 'well-provisioned'".

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