Bloomberg: Israel's Long-Stalled Gas Plan Extricated From Impasse

The major obstacle to developing Israel’s natural-gas fields was swept away on Sunday when a cabinet minister who had held up the plan for months agreed to resign.

The Tel Aviv gas shares rallied the most in a week on the news, advancing 3.1 percent at 12:18 p.m., the biggest increase since Oct. 25.

Economy Minister Aryeh Deri, whose Shas party represents a working class constituency, had refused to exercise an emergency regulation that would have permitted the government’s proposed natural gas blueprint to move ahead despite opposition from the Antitrust Authority. The authority’s former commissioner, David Gilo, resigned in protest over the government’s plan in June, saying it doesn’t do enough to reduce the monopoly over Israel’s offshore gas fields held by a small number of companies headed by Texas-based Noble Energy Inc. and Israel’s Delek Group Ltd.