Tamar Gas Field (Delek Drilling Video)
Israel has seen unprecedented growth in its natural gas sector over the past decade. This is according to a new report released by BDO and The Israeli Natural Gas Trade Association.
Cumulative savings to Israel’s economy over the past decade, said the report, was over NIS 316 billion ($86 billion). This amounted to savings of more than NIS 120,000 ($28,000) for every household in Israel during that time.
Also, Israel is the OECD leader in saving gas for the future and third in the organization in reserves per capita and has seen a 40% increase in national natural gas reserves over the past decade. And NIS 19 billion ($5.2 billion) was paid directly to the state treasury over the last decade. That amount will rise to 90 billion Shekel by 2030.
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And thanks to natural gas the price of electricity in Israel was nearly 50% lower than in Europe at the end of 2022 and the country saw substantial reduction in the intensity of pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions.
Israel has been engaged in a campaign to wean the country off of most fossil fuels and over to renewable energies and cleaner burning energies like natural gas. And the country has so much natural gas coming from its offshore fields in the Mediterranean Sea that it is now exporting gas to other countries.
Energean, the British energy company which operates Israeli natural gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea, operates several such natural gas fields including the new “Katlan” gas field located in Israeli waters in the Mediterranean Sea. The Katlan field is located between Energean’s Karish and Tanin fields and is now the first new natural gas field recognized by the Israeli government since 2015.
BDO Israel is a business oriented accounting and consulting firm ranking amongst the five leading accounting firms in Israel. The report was published on the tenth anniversary of the production of natural gas from the Tamar Reservoir, which marked the beginning of the era of massive use of natural gas in Israel, was prepared in cooperation with the Israeli Natural Gas Trade Association, which is a member organization of the International Gas Union (IGU).
The report states that Israel is the OECD leader in saving gas for the future: the domestic production pace (reserves/annual production) constitutes only approximately half of the production rate among the largest producers in the OECD.
Israel also ranks third among OECD countries in natural gas reserves per capita – with twice as much as Canada and nearly three times as much as the United States.
According to a 2015 report by the Ministry of Energy, there’s potential for discovering an additional 2,100 BCM of natural gas in Israel’s economic waters – double the current reserves.
Over the past decade, natural gas contributed to a 32% reduction in the intensity of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from electricity production (the volume of emissions from electricity unit production), saving a pollution cost of about NIS 23.9 billion ($6.5 billion).
Regarding local air pollution, the report stated the intensity of NOx emissions has decreased by about 76% over the past decade. The intensity of SO2 emissions has decreased by about 85% over the past decade.
