Thursday, December 30, 2010

Eureka!

Israel has discovered a natural gas pocket off its northern shore, but no one knew how much gas until yesterday:

On Wednesday, the frenzy got fresh fuel: Noble confirmed its earlier estimates that the field contains 16 trillion cubic feet of gas—making it the world's biggest deepwater gas find in a decade, with enough reserves to supply Israel's gas needs for 100 years.

It's still early days, and getting all that gas out of the seabed may be more difficult than it seems today. But Noble and its partners think the field could hold enough gas to transform Israel, a country precariously dependent on others for energy, into a net-energy exporter.

This is a huge game-changer for the Middle East, hopefully in a good way.  Congratulations Israel!

8 comments:

  1. That is fantastic news!! Now let's hope it can be extracted for reasonable expense.

    Waiting for the usual suspects to claim ownership in 5...4...3...2...

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  2. How do you say "Now we're cooking with gas!" in Hebrew?

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  3. Um, Lewy14 - we cook with gas already. :p. Bottled (calor) gas anyway. Very few people use electricity here.

    And we say it like this:
    עכשיו נבשל עם גז
    Achshav nevashel im gaz!

    It's very exciting news. I'm a bit nervous, like florrie says, about the usual suspects up to their usual antics...

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  4. Anyway I want to wish you all Happy New Year. I can't wish you it in real time because it will be Shabbat, so you'll just have to take my wishes and not read them until tomorrow night. :))

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  5. This is great news for Israel, and as Lady Red says, hopefully a real game-changer.

    I hope the IDF naval forces are ready for the inevitable attempts on the site.

    And, Dangit, I already read Annie's #4. But luckily, I am developing a mind like a steel sieve, and will probably forget by tomorrow night.

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  6. Happy New Year, annie! Smooches!!

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  7. Happy New Year Annie!

    Is your Calor gas propane? Like we use for our BBQ's?

    Do you have to keep replacing the tanks or do you have a continuous plumbed-in supply?

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  8. Fay, I'm not sure what kind of gas we have but it is definitely brought in cylinders, or "balloons" as they are called here. Older apartments have their own "personal" gas tanks, usually 2 small ones. When the gas runs out in, the owner switches to the 2nd one manually and then calls the company to order a new balloon. In the newer apartments we have a central gas supply, but that just means we have 6 or 8 large balloons for the whole building, located in a special room outside the building, and these automatically supply all the apartments. The gas company comes about once a month to change the balloons. Each apartment has its own gas meter so each family is only billed for what they use.

    People living in private houses, not apartments, have the "old" system of course.

    Perhaps we'll be able to change to natural gas like they have in England once they get these gas fields going, speedily in our days Amen. :)

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