Brown - A New Era of Mideast Energy?

Stephen Brown..
frontpagemag.com..
09 January '12..





Finally, a piece of good news from the Middle East after almost a year of mostly bad.

The Middle Eastern energy picture took a turn for the better when Cyprus announced on December 28 that natural gas had been discovered off its southern coast where exploration had been taking place since last September. American-based Noble Energy of Houston, the company conducting the drilling operation for the joint Israeli-Greek Cypriot venture, said the field, named Aphrodite, may contain as much as 5 to 8 million cubic feet. The discovery is said to be large enough to meet Cyprus’s natural gas needs for the next 240 years and, even more encouraging, comes after only the first of 11 offshore areas marked out by the Cypriot government has been explored.

“The gas discovery in the exclusive economic zone of our country creates great prospects for Cyprus and its people, which we shall seriously and effectively exploit to serve public interest,” said Greek Cypriot President Demetrius Christofias, whose foreign minister last month on a visit to the United States received support for its natural gas research project from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

This exciting discovery will definitely provide a boost for an envisaged Israel-Cyprus-Greece pipeline to supply Europe with gas. A 185-km pipeline to bring gas from Israeli and Greek Cypriot fields to a planned liquidation plant in Cyprus is already in the works. Such joint projects are bringing the three countries closer together, as they seek to exploit the suspected massive energy deposits lying under the Mediterranean. Noble says a pipeline to Greece could be ready as early as 2014 or 2015. Before Greek Cyprus, Israel had also discovered huge amounts of offshore gas, described as the biggest finds worldwide in the last decade, which it wants to export.

Thou Shall Not Steal: Not Even from Rich Oil Tycoons

Moshe Feiglin
Manhigut Yehudit
21 Kislev, 5771
(Nov. 28, '10)

Translated from Ma'ariv's NRG website

Editor's note: A number of months ago, the Noble Gas Company discovered vast stores of natural gas in Israel's territorial waters. According to a prior agreement with the Israeli government, the royalties from the discovery were supposed to have been substantial. But after politicians mixed in, the government appointed the Sheshinski Committee, which advised Israel to re-adjust its tax/royalties structure on hydrocarbons. This proposal means that Israel will renege on its initial agreement with the drilling company and significantly lower the sum of the royalties.

First, proper disclosure. I have never met oil tycoon Yitzchak Teshuvah and I do not have any stocks or interests in Noble Energy. I have no reason to support them. On the contrary – as a politician, it is worthwhile for me to ride the populist wave and vociferously align with the witch hunt against the tycoons who "steal" the public's wealth.

But I have a small problem. Theft is theft and robbery is robbery – even when the victims are wealthy. True, many aspects of the Israeli version of capitalism are avaricious. The huge profits pocketed by Israel's banks are mostly based on interest gained on private accounts – not from actual business deals. This totally contradicts Jewish law and the Jewish spirit. This means that the banks are a motor of servitude – not of economic growth, as they are supposed to be.

The banks are only one glaring example. The salary gap in Israel is among the highest in the world. It's a dog eat dog world out there and the cunning chap who amasses power uses it to trample the person beneath him – without blinking an eye.

The solution for our problem with capitalism is not to institute socialism. Socialism is simply a sophisticated form of robbery that makes everybody poor. An ideology that rejects the sanctity of one's possessions will ultimately lead to a complete contempt for the sanctity of life. It is no coincidence that Stalin and Mao were the greatest murderers in the history of mankind. For some reason, we also seem to have forgotten that "Nazism" is a shortened version of "National Socialism." Socialism is the last thing we need.

We suffer from an exploitative form of capitalism because we have adopted it without our Jewish culture that would refine and restrain it. Jewish economics is based on a triangle. Its base is the sanctity of life and possessions, a.k.a. capitalism. But the triangle has two other sides: faith and kindness. The three Forefathers of the Nation of Israel; Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were billionaires. The approach that associates property with immorality is Christian. But if you remove capitalism from the ethical envelope of Jewish faith and kindness – you are left with the jungle that we experience today.

Back to the gas royalties. It is sad to see the transformation of politicians who espouse capitalism at every opportunity into populist Robin Hoods, robbing the rich to feed the poor. What usually happens in these cases is that if the Robin Hood doesn't know when to stop when he gets into power, the rich flee and he proceeds to rob the next layer of society.

(Read full article)

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For One Man, Israel's Big Gas Find Is Bittersweet Victory

Charles Levinson
Wall Street Journal
30 November 09

HERZLIYA, Israel -- Two natural-gas fields in Israel's Mediterranean waters were found in January to contain enough resources to meet Israel's energy needs for 20 years -- a huge find after more than half a century of lackluster carbon exploration here.

But for Yossi Langotsky, who for 10 years has been the driving force behind the project, the gusher was a bittersweet victory. He has been drilling holes in the Promised Land for nearly four decades, in a mostly futile search for energy. A month before drilling started on what would become the largest find in Israeli history, his financial backer pulled out. That forced him to relinquish his stake -- today valued at an estimated $350 million.

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Debbie Hill for the Wall Street Journal

Yossi Langotsky was forced to relinquish his stake in a natural-gas project shortly before drilling started on the largest find in Israeli history.

"After 60 years of no success in oil exploration here in Israel, a miracle took place, and I lost out 30 days before it happened," says Mr. Langotsky, 75 years old.

The pivotal role played by Mr. Langotsky in the historic discovery is undisputed. The two fields are named for his daughter, Dalit, and granddaughter, Tamar.

The fields, which won't start producing gas until 2014, are relatively modest by Mideast standards. But they have already triggered a frenzy in the country's quiet energy industry.

Since January, Israeli oil companies' stocks have soared, some rising as much as tenfold. In 2009, oil companies have invested between five and 10 times as much in Israel exploration as at any point in the country's history, says Yaakov Mimron, head of Israel's Petroleum Commission.

In recent weeks, two international companies, including Houston-based Noble Energy Inc., which led the team that made the gas find in January, separately began extensive and costly 3D seismic surveys of more offshore prospects. A Noble spokesman said they expect to drill new wells next year.

In the past 60 years, oil companies have drilled about 450 wells, but choked out just 20 million barrels of oil, less than Saudi Arabia churns out in three days.

Israel's dearth of oil in a region awash in it became a national joke. "My closest friends laughed at me," says Mr. Langotsky.

(Read full article)

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