Have you ever heard of Shimshon or Tamar? Probably not. They are the names of two of the natural gas and oil fields under the Mediterranean off the coast of Israel. This morning, the first results of drilling in Shimshon were announced in Israel. They showed that this first well seems to be a success. Obviously, there will need to be more production testing to come to a conclusion. The first results, however, seem to confirm that there really is a natural gas field at the location containing about 2.3 TCF (which is the latest estimate of potential recoverable reserves.) The Tamar field which is a bit further north contains something like four times that amount of reserves.
What all these numbers mean is that in a year or two Israel will no longer need to import fuel. It also means that the old Israeli joke is out of date. You know, the one with the punchline that has one Israeli say to another "Moses spent 40 years wandering through the desert with the Israelites, and they managed to find the only place in the Middle East without oil."
It is interesting to watch Israel plan to shift its economy to run much more heavily on natural gas. They have a large supply now, so they are moving to use it. Contrast this with America in the age of Obama. We have a much greater supply (enough to run our entire country for a century or more), and the Obama plan is to use the EPA to stop drilling and production of natural gas.
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