Natural gas in Israel

[4] The country possesses negligible reserves of crude oil but does have abundant domestic natural gas resources which were discovered in large quantities starting in 2009, after many decades of previously unsuccessful exploration.

Plans were made for the Israel Electric Corporation to construct several gas-driven power plants, for erecting a national gas distribution grid, and for an LNG import terminal.

As of 2014[update] however, this field is nearly depleted—earlier than expected due to increased pumping to partially compensate for the loss of imported Egyptian gas in the wake of unrest associated with the fall of the Mubarak regime in 2011.

[27][28] As a result, Israel, as well as its other neighbor Jordan, which also suffered from disruption of gas deliveries from Egypt, had to resort to importing significantly more expensive and polluting liquid heavy fuels as substitute sources of energy.

[30] In 2018, the owners of the Tamar and Leviathan fields announced that they were negotiating an agreement with a consortium of Egyptian firms, subject to regulatory approval in both countries, for the supply of up to 64 BCM of gas over 10 years valued at up to US$15 billion.

Although Egypt has been making strides in developing new gas fields to meet rising domestic demand, it also had idle LNG exporting capacity.

[33] In late November 2022 Energean announced a new commercial natural gas discovery of 13 billion cubic meters off the shore of Israel as a result of its exploratory drilling well dubbed Zeus.