Talk:Inside Zion Oil

Question: Can there really be vast pools of petroleum oil beneath Israel?

Answer: Probably not.

A huge factor working against any major oil find in Israel is simply the nation's size - Israel is too small to accommodate a major oil field. Large-scale oil finds invariably encompass areas of dozens of square miles... an area which Israel does not possess. The East Texas Oilfield is 218 square miles. After years of drilling in Israel (only resulting in dry wells) it is not practical to assume that a find similar in scale to the East Texas oil field can be located in Israel.

Take the Kashagan field in Khazakstan and Majnoon oil fields  in Iraq: among the world's largest finds these reserves encompass hundreds of square miles, and despite their size they have never been properly developed. And what do you think it would cost to develop those fields to ship the product to Israel versus domestic product at extreme depths? Israel occupies an area in the Middle East geologically unsuited for petroleum reserves, and that is why exploratory wells are being drilled to such great depths. If a very deep well is developed in Israel it will be a costly producer, but if it were a very large find, such a well could be more appropriately developed as a 'cluster' rather than as a very large field.

Regardless, based upon Israel's geographic size, the possibility of developing a large oil field on land is not only exceedingly remote, but non-existent; and that is why the development of natural gas off the coast is far more exciting. The discovery of the natural gas field 90 km. offshore from Haifa, known as Tamar, was made by a US-Israel consortium including the Delek Group, through its subsidiaries Delek Drilling and Avner Oil Exploration, Isramco Negev 2, Dor Gas Exploration and US oil operator Noble Energy Inc.

Even though Tamar is geographically close to Lebanon, the Tamar field may be developed to provide domestic independence for Israel in natural gas. An equivalent find of oil on land in Israel (to the Tamar field) is statistically improbable, and certainly would not render Israel to be a net Exporter of crude oil in any case.

Israeli interest in ANY sort of energy development on their claimed territory is understandable, from a financial perspective alone, hence Israel's desire to attract major energy players... for example Isramco.

Edit note
I have added the standard SourceWatch end sections and, by way of illustration (see here, have converted some of the current simple url references to the full references that we have as our standard. (See Help:References for more details). I have also added a couple of tags where additional citations are required. It would be appreciated if the authors of the article could upgrade the format of the remainder of the references. In the next day or so I'll return and work my way through the remainder of the article. with thanks --Bob Burton 01:39, 19 September 2009 (EDT)

Citing Wikipedia
The following sentence needs referencing. I removed a reference to Wikipedia for the last point. It is not sufficient to reference Wikipedia itself but referenced material on its pages may be of sufficient quality to be used in SourceWatch. If it is not referenced on the Wikipedia page then that really doesn't help us.--Bob Burton 00:52, 21 September 2009 (EDT)


 * Briefly, Joseph Farah is a right wing activist of Lebanese-Syrian Falangist descent, and the former editor of "The Sacramento Union", a right wing newspaper setup by Richard Mellon Scaife (Gulf Oil billionaire) to dilute the influence of the Sacramento Bee.

Edit notes

 * referring to Farah's wife Elizabeth a sentence stated that she "serves as the Director of Marketing for the company with close ties to Zion Oil major shareholders Hal Lindsey and Ralph Devore." - this was unreferenced and it wasn't clear to me what company is being referred to so I have removed it.


 * referring to the releases listed at http://www.realpennies.com/otc/NESS the text stated "A review of Ness Energy's press release archive reveals some interesting facts about Ness, eg. that the company had been in serious financial trouble since its inception." - this is not obvious from this reference;


 * in relation to Ness the text stated of the company's shareholders "all of whom lost their money." - aside from being unreferenced, this is not clear. I though the Chapter 10 simply allowed a listed company protection from being traded while a corporate restructuring was underway. If my understanding is correct, entering Chapter 10 brankruptcy protection does not mean that shareholders have lost their money (though obviously they can't access any of their investment).--Bob Burton 03:11, 21 September 2009 (EDT)