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Israeli partners mull $750 million deal for Tamar gas

Partners operating the Tamar gas field off the Israeli coast said Monday a deal is in the works to sell gas to a company building an Israeli power plant. Israeli energy company Delek Group said its board of directors authorized managers to sign a take-or-pay deal with its partners at the Tamar field with subsidiary Delek Soreq, which is building the plant, "in the coming days." Delek Group said Monday the $750 million deal is for 116 billion cubic feet of natural gas. "The supply of natural gas is expected to commence in the beginning of the first quarter of 2016 for the period of more than 15 years or up until the contracted quantity has been utilized," Delek Group said in a statement Monday. Noble Energy, which has headquarters in Texas, holds a 36 percent stake in the Tamar field. Delek […]

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Hezbollah says Israel bombed its positions

Hezbollah says Israel carried out an airstrike targeting its positions in Lebanon near the border with Syria earlier this week, claiming it caused damage but no casualties. The Wednesday statement was the group’s first acknowledgement of the reported Monday night airstrikes. Hezbollah said the attack was near the eastern Lebanese village of Janta. It vowed to retaliate but said it will "choose the appropriate time and place." Lebanon’s state news agency has reported that Israeli aircraft carried out the strikes. Israel has refused to confirm them. Hezbollah, allied to President Bashar Assad in Syria, has been fighting alongside his troops in areas near the border. This was the first reported Israeli airstrike inside Lebanese territory since the start of Syria’s conflict three years ago. Israel has fired artillery across the border. © 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be […]

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Israeli Warplanes Strike Near the Border of Syria and Lebanon

Israeli warplanes launched two raids near the Syrian-Lebanese border late Monday, according to Lebanon ’s National News Agency, raising speculation that Israel might have targeted a weapons convoy to prevent the Syrian government from delivering missiles to its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah . Israel has struck Syria at least three times in the past year, according to United States officials, to prevent sophisticated weapons from reaching Hezbollah amid the chaos of Syria ’s war. Neither Syria nor Hezbollah has retaliated. The potential significance of Monday’s strike depended on whether the raids hit Syrian or Lebanese territory, which was not immediately clear. Analysts said it would be politically harder for Hezbollah to refrain from striking back if Israel, its longtime enemy, had struck inside Lebanon. An Israeli strike inside Lebanon would also represent a further escalation in the regional involvement in — and spillover from — the Syrian […]

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Israel has $500M gas deal with Jordan, but wider exports still unclear

Israel has signed its first gas export deal, selling gas worth $500 million to Arab peace partner Jordan, but debate is still unresolved on whether the Jewish state will export the bulk of its gas via undersea pipeline or by tanker as liquefied natural gas. The gas that will go to Jordan, Israel’s eastern neighbor, from the Tamar field in the eastern Mediterranean under the 15-year contract signed Wednesday will be pumped via pipeline to two of the Hashemite kingdom’s chemical companies, Arab Potash and its subsidiary Jordan Bromine, at their facilities on the Dead Sea. Stakeholders in the Tamar field, headed by Noble Energy of Houston, Tex., and its Israeli partners Delek Group and Avner Oil & Gas, signed a 20-year gas supply deal with the Palestinian Authority in January for a planned power station in the West Bank. Technically, the […]

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Energy Firms in Talks to Sell Israeli Gas to Egypt

Israel’s recently discovered offshore natural gas is generating momentum for politically important supply deals that could alleviate energy shortages in Jordan and Egypt. The drilling consortium led by Israel’s Delek Group Ltd. and Texas-based Noble Energy said Wednesday it signed a deal to supply gas to chemical companies in Jordan, marking Israel’s first energy export deal and bolstering ties between the neighboring countries. The same offshore drilling group is holding initial talks on a much larger supply deal with Egypt, people familiar with the matter said. Drillers announced two Mediterranean finds in recent years with some 650 billion cubic meters of gas. Flush with energy reserves that could last for decades, Israel has been considering exports to several countries in the eastern Mediterranean including Cyprus and Turkey. Despite the modest size of the deal with Jordan, it has important geopolitical implications. It was the focus of talks between King […]

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Woodside to Invest Up to $2.6 Billion in Israeli Gas Venture

Woodside Petroleum Ltd. (WPL) , Australia’s second-largest oil producer, plans to buy a quarter of Israel ’s biggest natural gas field under a revised agreement for as much as $2.6 billion as demand rises in the Middle East . Woodside agreed to pay Noble Energy Inc. (NBL) and its venture partners an initial $850 million when the deal is completed, due by the end of next month, the Perth-based company said today in a statement. The stake is smaller than the 30 percent negotiated in December 2012, worth as much as $2.3 billion, though the size of the resource estimate has risen to 18.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from 17 trillion cubic feet. A deal would put Woodside in the middle of Israel’s nascent natural gas industry as the company’s proposed projects in Australia face delays. Woodside’s original agreement in December 2012 was held up because of […]

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Palestinian utility secures Leviathan natural gas

Partners developing the Leviathan natural gas field in the Mediterranean Sea said Monday a Palestinian utility company is the first to secure a supply contract. Delek Drilling Ltd. and Avner Oil Exploration said they signed a 20-year supply agreement with the Palestine Power Generation Co. "According to the agreement, the purchaser will acquire natural gas from the sellers for power plant operating needs that the purchaser intends to build near Jenin in the northern West Bank," the developers said in a statement. Delek and Avner said the Palestinian company secured 167 billion cubic feet of natural gas from Leviathan under the terms of the agreement. Natural gas prices will be pegged to market prices for Brent crude oil. Delek and Avner said the deal is dependent on development of Leviathan and applicable regulations. Leviathan, with 18 trillion cubic feet of natural gas […]

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Hezbollah Upgrades Missile Threat to Israel

U.S. officials believe members of Hezbollah, the militant group backed by Iran, are smuggling advanced guided-missile systems into Lebanon from Syria piece by piece to evade a secretive Israeli air campaign designed to stop them. The moves illustrate how both Hezbollah and Israel are using Syria’s civil war as cover for what increasingly is seen as a complex and high-stakes race to prepare for another potential conflict—their own—in ways that could alter the region’s military balance. Some components of a powerful antiship missile system have already been moved to Lebanon, according to previously undisclosed intelligence, while other systems that could target Israeli aircraft, ships and bases are being stored in expanded weapons depots under Hezbollah control in Syria, say current and former U.S. officials. Such guided weapons would be a major step up from the "dumb" rockets and missiles Hezbollah now has stockpiled, and could sharply increase the group’s […]

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Hezbollah Moving Long-Range Missiles From Syria to Lebanon, an Analyst Says

Amid the chaos of Syria ’s civil war, Hezbollah has been moving long-range missiles to Lebanon from bases where it had stored them inside Syria, including long-range Scud D missiles that can strike deep into Israel , according to an Israeli national security analyst. The analyst, Ronen Bergman, who has close contacts with Israeli intelligence officials, said Thursday that despite Israel’s undeclared campaign of airstrikes in Syria to stop new deliveries, most of the long-range surface-to-surface missiles given to Hezbollah by its allies Iran and Syria have been disassembled and moved to Lebanon. American intelligence analysts have also concluded that members of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, are smuggling components of advanced Russian-made antiship missile systems piecemeal into Lebanon from war-stricken Syria to avoid an Israeli air campaign, a United States official said Thursday. As many as 12 Russian-made antiship cruise missile systems may now be […]

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Israeli fuel strategy leans on gas

Israeli fuel strategy leans on gas Israel plans to cut oil use in transportation by 60 percent by 2025, an aggressive target by world standards, and will tap into its newfound natural gas deposits to make it happen. It is also investing heavily to help start-ups developing battery and biofuel technologies, and is offering an annual $1 million (R10.34 million) prize to innovators in the field, almost on par with winning a Nobel. Eyal Rosner, spokesman for the project in prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, said: “The intent is to make Israel a power centre that has knowledge and industry in the field, and from there to serve as a catalyst for the rest of the world in making the switch. The Fuel Choices Initiative programme has a 10-year budget of 1.5 billion shekels (R4.44 billion). Rosner switching from oil would bring consumer […]

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