By David Krantz

NEW YORK (Sept. 2, 2014) — Tonight the Jerusalem District Committee for Planning and Building nixed a plan to exploit the oil shale of the Elah Valley, where David fought Goliath. The plan’s rejection serves to protect the water, land and air shared by Israelis and Palestinians.

 

“This is an important day for the environment and for the citizens of Israel, who won one of the most beautiful and toured parts of Israel,” Environmental Minister Amir Peretz told Israeli media.

 

The Jerusalem committee was the last bureaucratic hurdle before the oil shale could be drilled. After 10 hours of deliberation, the Jerusalem planning committee voted against the plan 13 to 1 with two abstentions. The only vote in support of the plan came from the Energy and Water Resources Ministry’s representative.

 

The Green Zionist Alliance and its allies in Israel have been working against exploitation of the oil shale for the past four years. Partners led scores of protests. Leaders of the Green Zionist Alliance convened a committee within Keren Kayemet L’Yisrael (KKL-JNF) and issued an investigative report, which was approved unanimously by KKL-JNF in spite of significant pressure from the pro-oil lobby. Together we educated the public about the issue and spoke with lawmakers and government ministries.

 

Israel Energy Initiatives — backed by an all-star cast including mega-philanthropist Michael Steinhardt, news-magnate Rupert Murdoch, former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and Rothschild family-heir Lord Jacob Rothschild — was pursuing the project, which would have involved two controversial processes to extract shale oil from oil shale. Hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking, involves shooting water and chemicals at high velocities into rock to crack it open. In the United States and elsewhere it is done to reach pockets of natural gas and crude oil that otherwise wouldn’t be feasible to extract. In Israel, fracking would have been used along with horizontal drilling to prime wells for in-situ retorting — heating the ground hundreds of degrees Celsius in order to melt the otherwise-solid shale, in the form of kerogen, oil out of shale rock.

 

Israel Energy Initiatives is a subsidiary of Genie Energy, a spinoff of telecommunications-giant IDT Corporation, which in turn is controlled by billionaire Howard Jonas.

 

The project was sold as promoting energy independence; yet the project actually would have done the opposite, because the processes to extract the shale oil from the oil shale would have consumed more energy than the amount energy in the shale oil itself. In other words, the process would have been an energy net loss. Aside from increasing Israel’s dependence on fossil fuels and further contributing to climate change, the project also threatened the air quality of the area and the aquifer that’s under the Judean Hills in both Israel and the West Bank.

 

The victory is significant for the Green Zionist Alliance, Israel’s environmental movement, and all who care about clean air, water and land for Israelis and Palestinians. Yet our fight is not yet over. Israel Energy Initiatives sister corporation Afek Oil and Gas — which is run by Effie Eitam, a former minister of national infrastructures, and is another subsidiary of Genie Energy — is planning on drilling for crude oil in the Golan Heights. In late July the Northern District Committee for Planning and Building approved Afek’s request to drill 10 exploratory wells in the Golan. Fracking will likely be used to extract the oil because it is likely in tight pockets in shale rock.

 

Yesterday, Green Zionist Alliance sister organization Adam Teva V’Din, the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to repeal the drilling approval, which threatens the safety of drinking water in the Sea of Galilee.

 

We have won the battle against fracking in the Elah Valley but our fight may only be beginning.

 

 

 

 

David Krantz is the president and chairperson of Aytzim: Ecological Judaism.

 

By David Krantz

NEW YORK (Feb. 8, 2013) — Moses took a wrong turn leading the Israelites out of Egypt, the old joke goes, and instead the Jewish people ended up in the rare spot in the Middle East without oil. As Arthur Herman noted recently in the New York Post, it’s now known that Israel has about as much oil as Saudi Arabia. Well, sort of. On his way to blindly embracing the thought of Israel as the world’s next oil superpower, Herman ignored details that make all the difference.

Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that energy is not the most precious commodity — water is. Israelis and Palestinians together use 20 percent more water every year than is naturally replenished.

It is widely thought that the next war in the region will not be over oil, but over water. And fracking for oil threatens to poison the region’s limited fresh-water supply, further escalating tensions and making new peace agreements between Israel and its neighbors harder to achieve, since such agreements will include division of water rights.

Desalination is expensive, energy intensive, polluting and harmful to sea life. If you want peace in the Middle East, you need to protect the local water supply from fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, a water-intensive process for fossil-fuel extraction that may contaminate groundwater with chemicals and the oil itself.

And speaking of the oil — the quantities of oil may be similar in Israel and Saudi Arabia, but the type is different. Saudi Arabia has crude oil — that viscous type that you’ve seen in gushers in the movies. But Israel’s oil is shale oil — it’s basically oil-saturated shale rock. And you can’t put rocks in your gas tank.

The only way to get the oil out of the rock is to heat it by hundreds and hundreds of degrees. Traditionally this is done by digging up the surface and setting the rocks on fire — scorching the Earth, literally. Now oil companies want to extract the oil by a combination of fracking and in-situ retorting — that is, heating the rocks while they are still under the ground.

Fracking advocates say that this will lead to energy independence for Israel. But has anyone thought about where the energy will come from to heat the shale? Today Israel is powered by coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, that it imports from the world market. Even as Israel transitions to using more natural gas, it unfortunately is not about to kick its coal habit anytime soon. Because the rocks need to be heated first before the oil can be extracted, and even then the shale oil needs to be processed far more extensively than conventional crude oil, Israel will burn much more energy to extract the oil than the amount of energy in the oil. Fracking for oil is an energy net loss, and one that may make Israel more dependent on foreign fuel than it is today.

There are many other ways that fracking is harmful — for example, fracking has been linked to greater instances of earthquakes in Arkansas and Texas, particularly important for Israel given that the country sits along both the Dead Sea Fault as well as the Carmel Fault — but perhaps the most damaging is that fracking is an investment in the past instead of the future.

Referring specifically to both the Green Zionist Alliance and Jews Against Hydrofracking, a grassroots group that the GZA helped start, Herman said that "anti-frackers are running against the tide of technology." Again, in ignoring the details, Herman got it backwards. Burning fossil fuels is the old way of doing things. We "anti-frackers" embrace modern technology: clean, renewable energy technologies that generate energy without polluting our air, land and water. Israel, for example, is one of the best places in the world for solar power.

Herman was right in pointing out that the oil shale is in Israel’s Elah Valley, where David fought Goliath, but he got the roles wrong. The fossil-fuel companies are Goliath. The Green Zionist Alliance and its allies in Israel — such as the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel and the Citizens' Committee to Save Adullam — are working against Goliath to protect and safeguard Israel.

If you love Israel — if you want clean air, land and water for its citizens, if you want to support energy independence in Israel, if you want to support peace in Israel — then join the fight against fracking. Goliath fell once before in the Elah Valley, and together we can fell him again.

 

 

 

 

David Krantz is the president and chairperson of Aytzim: Ecological Judaism.

 

Feb. 16, 2012

 

To: Yossi Wurzburger, director of natural-resources administration

Ministry of Energy and Water Resources

 

Re: Comments on the Petroleum Regulation Memorandum (Permission to deviate from the provisions of the Planning and Building Law)

 

Dear Sir,

 

I am honored to present my comments on the Regulation Memorandum (Permission to deviate from the provisions of the Planning and Building Law) (hereinafter: “The Memorandum”) published in the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources site. My comments are presented in the order of memorandum items and not by priority.

 

1. Regulation 1 and Regulation 3: These sections demonstrate that when applying for an oil drilling permit, one is not required to present a detailed plan, as would be required without the deviation from the Planning and Building law, but a “request” only. The properties of such as “request” differ from those of a detailed plan. A major difference is regarding the lack of requirement for the application to include references to plans of a higher grade applicable to the area for which the application is requested. In addition, the proposed planning procedure does not distinguish between the planning and the licensing phases.

 

The exemption from referencing plans of a higher grade applicable to the application area is unlikely for several reasons:

a. The exemption contradicts the national planning policy requiring gradual planning and addressing zoning determined at the state, regional and local level. This absence of reference might mislead the public and the planning authorities regarding planned zoning in the area. Drilling (if approved) might prevent future use of the land. A request that does not refer to the current and future planning of the area and the existing land purpose is an "island" of lack of planning in a sea of planning, and endangers any planning achievements attained for such areas.

b. The exemption is unreasonable due to the environmental impact of oil drilling. An oil drill is an industrial and infrastructural facility for all purposes, in which hazardous substances are used, in which emissions to the environment, air, earth and water might occur, and in which there is (and unfortunately not so small) a probability for accidents and groundwater contamination (in relevant areas). There is no justification for exempting oil drilling from the stringent requirements applying to industrial facilities with similar characteristics (for which the economic incentive and motive for a swift approval is as large).

c. The exemption from referring to plans of a higher grade impairs the factual basis placed in front of the regional planning committee, and this committee is obliged to make decisions based on factual basis. An administrative and planning decision is judged by the integrity of its factual basis (See Daphna Barak-Erez, Administrative Law, Volume I, page 439 (2009)). It is pointless to reach a decision whose arguments are appropriate and reasonable if does not fit the factual circumstances. The regional committee must base its decision on sufficient facts. In this case, since the potential impact of oil drilling on man and environment is high, the required evidentiary standard for a regional committee hearing is strict as well. (Compare to Barak Erez page 447.)

 

In light of the above, partial factual basis will not suffice, and the request presented to the regional committee must include a full reference to all programs applicable to the region and to alternative drilling sites (see discussion below in my comments regarding the environmental document).

 

2. Regulation 1 – The environmental document mentioned in the regulation is a document of unclear legal standing. Since there is no definition in the authorizing act to an "environmental document" as stated, many open questions remain regarding the legality of its requirement, its stature, who is authorized to edit it, who is authorized to examine it, and what data exactly should this document contain. For example, it is not stated that document is to include a full detail of a monitoring plan for environmental emissions from the drilling facility — how would this plan be implemented, as well as a detailed list of reports and information that would be transmitted to the supervisor responsible for the existence of the environmental document. Especially disconcerting is the fact that the environmental document as defined in the memo is not obliged to perform an examination of alternatives, including the zero alternative (no implementation).

 

Given the absence of needed detail, and lack of clarity regarding these issues (and others), any deviation from the existing mechanism of an environmental-impact assessment must be avoided.

 

The absence of a requirement for an examination of alternatives, including the zero alternative, impairs the factual basis placed in front of the regional planning committee when making a decision. This not only puts the decision-making process in a negative light, as if it is meant to approve the request regardless, but might also lead to a decision that could be found flawed under judicial review.

 

3. Regulation 3(2) – This regulation leaves the decision of whether to request an environmental document to the discretion of the committee. Leaving this decision to the discretion of the committee is neither desirable nor helpful, for the following reasons:

a. As stated above, any oil drilling has far-reaching environmental implications. There is no sense in requiring an environmental document for only some of the wells.

b. Requiring the preparation of an environmental document as an obligatory part of the request process would cause certainty among oil drilling requestors and would allow them to prepare in advance.

c. Imposing a binding requirement in all cases would ultimately shorten schedules since this requirement would be known in advance and would not be made once the request hearing was already underway.

d. This will reduce the exposure of the regional committee to pressures from financiers and entrepreneurs.

4. Regulation 4(1) - Allowing filing objects to a request is appropriate and desirable given the importance of transparency and public participation in such matters.

5. Regulation 4(ix) - Preventing filing appeals to the state council of planning and building is undesirable. This regulation would not streamline the process, since the lack of possibility of appealing to the state committee over decisions of the regional committee would lead in suitable cases to the filing of an administrative complaint in court against the decision of the regional committee. Filing legal action would further delay the process.

6. Regulation 5(4) – Mentions sub-terrain heating as included in the oil-drilling process. Sub-terrain heating is a procedure used in producing fuel from oil shale, a procedure completely different from routine oil drilling. Including this procedure in the above indicates an intention to apply these regulations to fuel production from oil shale, although this was not explicitly stated. This intent directly contradicts the petroleum law, which does not address fuel production from oil shale. It should be mentioned that this interpretation of the petroleum law is pending in the Supreme Court. It is inappropriate that regulations would operate under the guise of determining planning processes, and would enter through a back door technology that is different, controversial, and has planning and environmental impact that is totally different from routine oil drilling. This is akin to mixing oil and water. In light of the fact that there is no national master plan for fuel production from oil shale, and given the uncertainty surrounding technologies needed for producing fuel in this matter, we must not allow binding these two methods together.

7. Regulation 7(b) – Although this regulation is poorly worded, subject to varied interpretation, and is not tied to the situation addressed by the regulation, I will comment as follows:

a. It is unclear what the “procedures needed to for fuel production” mentioned in this section are, in contrast to the procedures “for fuel production” defined in section 1.

b. The regulation mentions procedures “for commercial oil production.” These are not mentioned at all in the regulations, and the regulations do not apply to them.

c. The regulation probably requires submitting a detailed plan in order to approve “commercial oil production” to one whose drilling request had already been discussed by the committee prior to the regulation start date.

d. Commercial oil production is a procedure different in essence and scope from fuel-exploration drilling. Therefore is it unreasonable to allow commercial operation prior to approving a detailed plan (as the regulation allows).

 

In order to properly regulate the planning process related to “commercial oil production” a comprehensive settlement must be established, and this issue must not be added as a misplaced patch.

 

To summarize, the said regulations contain the blessed aspect of regulating the planning procedure applicable to oil drilling, a process unregulated thus far. However, the regulation manner is inadequate and raises concerns of an attempt to allow rapid approval of “drilling requests.” Although there is an interest and need to increase the efficiency of planning processes in such cases, this interest must be balanced properly against the interest of a process that is transparent, controlled and based on an adequate evidentiary foundation. It appears that in these regulations as they are, the required balance has been violated. The proposed amendments will allow improving the balance between planning efficiency considerations on the one hand, and strict protection of proper and sustainable planning on the other.

 

Best regards,

Dr. Orr Karassin

 

 

 

 

Dr. Orr Karassin is a Green Zionist Alliance representative to the board of directors of Jewish National Fund in Israel.

 

The Israeli government’s Ministry of Energy and Water is trying to exempt oil-shale frackers from regulations, which might give oil companies free reign to drill throughout the Elah Valley. But the Green Zionist Alliance has joined with others to lead an effort to stop the exemptions and stop fracking in one of the last few open spaces left between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

 

Multinational energy companies are planning to frack the Promised Land. But no matter what you call it — fracking, hydrofracking, hydraulic fracturing — it's bad news for Israel's environment. Read more below about what Aytzim's Green Zionist Alliance is doing to stop fracking in Israel:

 

  1. Maccabees Redux: Oil-Fracking Fight in Israel
  2. Hydrofracking and the Book of Job
  3. GZA Leads KKL-JNF Effort Against Fracking in Israel
  4. Israel: The New Saudi Arabia?
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