Strategic Assessment

In 1999, after some 50 years of exploration, commercial quantities of natural gas were discovered in Israel. A discovery of this magnitude is a potential windfall, in both economic and security terms. However, to reap the benefits of it, a number of steps remain to be taken. Exploiting natural gas reserves requires more than just the discovery of the gas itself: an infrastructure of pipelines for delivering it to consumers must be set up, and a market for it must exist.