Category:

Israel rejects mooted nuclear deal with Iran

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel utterly rejects a mooted world powers deal with Iran aimed at ending a long-running row over its nuclear ambitions and will not be bound by such an accord, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday. Speaking as headed into a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Netanyahu told reporters that Iran had got "the deal of the century". "Israel utterly rejects it and what I am saying is shared by many in the region, whether or not they express that publicly. Israel is not obliged by this agreement and Israel will do everything it needs to do to defend itself and the security of its people," he said. Israel has repeatedly warned that it might strike Iran if it did not halt its nuclear program, accusing Tehran of seeking to build atomic weapons. Iran says its various nuclear facilities are geared to civilian […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Israel drills disputed West Bank oilfield with 3.5B barrels

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Nov. 6 (UPI) — Israel’s Givot Olam oil company says it’s exploring an oil field that could contain 3.53 billion barrels of crude, which along with the rich natural gas fields the Jewish state’s found under the Mediterranean Sea seems set to make it a regional energy power. There’s only one problem: Most of the Meged field, where Givot Olam started drilling in 2011, appears to lie in Palestinian West Bank, which Israel has occupied since June1967. On Tuesday, just hours before U.S. Secretary of state John Kerry arrived to press Israel on Washington’s latest peace initiative, Israeli negotiators told the Palestinians that the Separation Wall the Jewish state’s building across the West Bank will mark the border with a future Palestinian state. That would mean almost the entire Meged, which starts just inside Israel near the pre-1967 Green Line that separates the Jewish state from […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Israel to drill for oil in the West Bank

Israel to drill for oil in the West Bank Page added on November 4, 2013 A large reserve may lie under Israel and the occupied territories, but Palestinians are unlikely to reap the benefits. Israeli investors had reason to celebrate last month with the news that Israel may soon be joining the club of oil-producing states, in addition to its recent finds of large natural gas deposits off the coast. Shares in Givot Olam, an Israeli oil exploration company, rallied on reports that it had located much larger oil reserves at its Meged 5 site than previously estimated. The company, which says it has already sold $40m worth of oil since the Meged field went operational in 2011, now believes that the well is sitting on exploitable reserves of as much as 3.53 billion barrels – about a seventh of Qatar’s proven oil reserves. Only one cloud looms on […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Energy Needs Trump Turkey-Israel Tension

ISTANBUL—Turkey and Israel’s political divergence in the past few years is of little concern to businessmen, especially when some of the world’s largest natural gas deposits are at stake. Israel, together with Cyprus, sits on more than 120 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Eastern Mediterranean, according to U.S. Geological Survey assessments. That’s enough to meet natural gas needs for 2,400 years in energy-starved Turkey, which relies on Russia for 60% and Iran for 20% of its imports. The trick is navigating the choppy political waters. It’s a difficult proposition as Turkey-Israel ties have been at best strained for the past three years, and Ankara doesn’t even recognize the Cypriot government in Nicosia. But executives from Turkish and Israeli energy firms say their deals can allow corporations to surmount the obstacles politicians can’t overcome. If they succeed, Turkey may see a fifth of its annual natural gas […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

This Natural Gas Find Could Completely Change the World As We Know It

This Natural Gas Find Could Completely Change the World As We Know It Page added on November 4, 2013 One thing that makes the energy sector so intriguing is the constant overlap between markets and politics. In many ways, energy security is synonymous with national security, and the supply and demand needs of the oil market can make the most unlikely bedfellows. One country that has been at the center of energy and politics for decades has been Israel. For years the country has been dependent upon foreign energy sources, but a major discovery by Noble Energy (NYSE: NBL ) and its partners has turned this situation on its head. Let’s look how this massive natural gas find could affect both the political landscape and the pockets of major oil companies like ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM ) . With a name like Leviathan, it has to be big In 2010, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Israel launches attacks on military sites in Syria

Israel’s air force attacked two military sites inside Syria on Wednesday evening, US military sources confirmed, marking the latest of several such covert strikes on the country’s northeastern neighbour this year. The sites are near the port city of Latakia and the capital Damascus, according to a person briefed on the matter, who said the US military believed that it was Israel that attacked. Confirmation of the attack late on Thursday followed earlier reports of sightings of Israeli jets in Lebanon and at least one explosion in Syria. Israel’s military, which has struck targets in Syria several times this year, declined to confirm or deny that it carried out the strikes. “We never comment on foreign reports,” an Israel Defence Forces spokeswoman said. Nagham Ghadri, a member of the Syrian National Coalition, the Turkey-based opposition group, said that activists in Latakia had reported hearing a huge explosion coming from […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Israel dismisses reports Iran halting higher-grade enrichment

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel on Saturday dismissed as "irrelevant" reports that Iran had halted its most sensitive uranium enrichment activity, and said Tehran’s nuclear program must be dismantled. A senior member of Iran’s parliamentary national security commission was quoted as saying Iran had stopped refining uranium above the 5 percent required for civilian power stations, as it already had all the 20-percent enriched fuel it needed for a medical research reactor in Tehran. But diplomats accredited to the U.N. nuclear watchdog said they had no confirmation Iran had halted enrichment of uranium to 20 percent – a sensitive issue because it is a relatively short technical step to increase that to the 90 percent needed to make a nuclear warhead. "The discussion on whether or not Iran has ceased 20 percent enrichment is irrelevant," said an Israeli official. Israel fears its arch enemy Iran is developing atomic weapons capability, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple