Indications that the recent find of natural gas of the coast of the Israeli city of Haifa were pointing to a pretty big find. Now it turns out that it may be huge. According to Globes: “The consortium drilling the Tamar-1 well offshore of Haifa has received encouraging news from the drilling operator, Noble Energy (NYSE:NBL), which reported today that flow test results showed that the potential size of the original estimate of 3.1 trillion cubic feet has now been increased 60% to an estimated resource potential of 5 trillion cubic feet. Noble Energy chairman and CEO Charles D. Davidson said, “The test results from the Tamar well confirm our initial analysis that the discovered reservoirs are very high quality. This discovery is clearly of a size for commercial development. We hope to extend the success in Israel by testing Dalit, our second prospect.”

This is so big for Israel, that it’s hard to comprehend. Who could imagine that a country with little in the way of natural resources is now going to be a net exporter of natural gas? Suddenly Israel will be a player, along with its’ enemies in the region, in the global energy market.

I say forget Shai Agassi and his Project Better Place. Israel should convert from gasoline to natural gas to power automobiles. If Israel could develop this technology, it would be huge, as certain parts of the US, Canada could also power their cars on natural gas.

With experts saying that these wells could go commercial in 5 years, I would expect a pick up in Israeli start-ups that are going to tackle the natural gas issue.

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