The Jewish Chronicle: Shale: A key to Israel’s future

While Israel’s natural gas may be sufficient to fulfill domestic needs for the next 40 years, the government of Israel has sensibly decided that solar power — both photovoltaic (“PV”) plants and concentrating solar power (“CSP”) — should be part of the nation’s energy mix, providing an additional pollution-free source of electrical power whenever the sun is shining.  

Given these enormous offshore natural gas resources and the solar energy projects that are being pursued, why, then, does it remain important for Israel to develop its shale resources?

To understand that need, it first is crucial to clarify that, while the undersea sandstone formations in which Israel’s gas is entrapped are overlain with shale, these offshore sites are not what are meant when people talk about Israel’s “shale” deposits — particularly since Israel’s offshore gas is being recovered by “conventional” means rather than using more complex technologies usually needed for producing fossil fuels from shale.

Instead, when people speak of Israel’s shale they are referring to two onshore sites, one in the center of Israel near Beit Shemesh (the “Shfela Basin”) and the other in the Golan.  MORE