Publications on Climate, Infrastructure and Energy

The drop in oil prices of 55 percent over the past year stems from a classic supply and demand imbalance. The singular aspect of the current slump in the oil market is its occurrence at the height of the Middle East upheavals. This convergence of factors is problematic for the Gulf monarchies, and even more so for the nations economically connected to them. The high oil prices and foreign currency reserves from the outbreak of the unrest until 2014 helped the regimes in the Gulf maintain their citizens’ high standard of living. The...

The draft of the framework pertaining to the natural gas produced from the Tamar gas field and the development of other fields, especially Leviathan, has not yet been approved by the government or the Knesset. Nonetheless, it is already possible to discuss some regional and international aspects of the issue and their implications for Israel’s relations with its neighbors, the United States, and other nations. • It has been more than a decade since natural gas started flowing from the reserves discovered in Israel’s economic waters,...

Despite progress in several Gulf states in diversifying their economies, the dependence on oil profits among Gulf principalities remains almost absolute, and their political stability is directly linked to the high standard of living enjoyed by their citizens. The public atmosphere emerging in the Gulf states since the unrest in the Arab world began exposed the dissatisfaction of the local population with the growing unemployment and the existing poverty that have been concealed from the public. The decline in oil prices therefore...

Global oil prices have fallen dramatically over the past six months, following an excess of supply over demand. The drop in prices is another blow to Iran and to Russia, which are both under economic sanctions. Iran is accusing Saudi Arabia of conducting an oil war, and is threatening to respond to it. These threats highlight the danger of the Iranian nuclear process to the stability of the Persian Gulf in particular, and to the global energy market in general. The economic pressure on Iran, however, is likely to constitute an...

At a conference hosted on April 10, 2014 by the Delek Group, a senior partner in the consortium that won the franchise to develop Leviathan, participants were shown a map of the field’s export potential. If this map reflects strategic decisions by the consortium, most of the export targets – Egypt, Jordan, the PA and Turkey – are concentrated in the Mediterranean.  All of the export targets in the region, as well as more distant export targets that depend on facilities located in neighboring countries (Turkey as a country that...

Global experience with oil and natural gas production indicates that international energy companies do not refrain from operating in areas of conflict and are not easily deterred by periodic terrorist attacks on their facilities. However, the case of the Nigerian Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) shows that even large corporations are liable to close their facilities when there is a direct attack on their foreign (non-local) employees. Israel can learn from the Nigerian experience how to cope with the...

Focus in the analytical essays compiled here is on Israel’s strategic environment, particularly the challenges and opportunities that await Israel in 2014. In 2013 the Middle East continued to grapplewith several risk-laden issues and processes that began in previous years, includingthe socio-political unrest in many Arab states and the increased power ofradical Islamic elements in lawless areas near Israel’s borders; the ongoingcivil war in Syria; the unresolved Iranian nuclear issue; and the wide gaps betweenIsrael and the...

Israel is in the second decade of a natural gas revolution, thanks to natural gas found in large quantities in Israel’s economic waters in the Mediterranean Sea. The use of natural gas is an important contribution to  environmental quality and brings with it significant economic advantages. At the same time, the gas revolution brings with it several complex dilemmas, for example, how to divide the benefits from the gas reserves between this generation and the next; this division relates to the amount of local consumption and gas...

Recent findings of natural gas in the Eastern Mediterranean, are expected not only to affect the energy market, but may also be considered a game-changer with geo-strategic, environmental and social implications. The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, the Macro Center for political Economics and the INSS organized a conference in the framework of the Israeli-European Policy Network, on June 5-6, 2013 in Tel-Aviv. It included many international experts from the region and the EU and focused on the different implications of the natural gas...

Israel’s Prime Minister, Finance Minister, Minister of Energy and Water Resources, and the Governor of the Bank of Israel decided last week that 60 percent of the total of Israel’s currently known natural gas reserves will be allocated for local consumption, and the rest will in principle be available for export. This decision deviates from the recommendations of the inter-ministerial Tzemach Committee to export about half of the total quantity.