{"id":187999,"date":"2011-01-02T19:18:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-03T00:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/01\/02\/missing-the-point-completely\/"},"modified":"2011-01-02T19:18:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-03T00:18:00","slug":"missing-the-point-completely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/01\/02\/missing-the-point-completely\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing the Point Completely"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This article notes that Israel appears to have made significant discoveries in offshore natural gas, but that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/idUSTRE6BT2J120101230\">access to foreign markets will be difficult<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>Israel can look forward to long-term energy security after the discovery of a huge off-shore natural gas field but obstacles lie ahead in exporting its output, experts said Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Israel will find it hard to secure foreign buyers as European gas consumption is weakening while competition is stiff in the expanding Asian market, they said.<\/p>\n<p>Texas-based Noble Energy and its Israeli exploration partners described Wednesday the Leviathan prospect &#8212; 130 km (80 miles) off the Mediterranean port of Haifa &#8212; as the world&#8217;s biggest gas find in the past decade<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This misses the reality of the situation.<\/p>\n<p>When one looks at oil exporting nations, with the exception of Norway, the truth is that it does not bring prosperity to the masses, nor does it make for a better society.<\/p>\n<p>Simply put, Israel should not plan to export the gas in any significant quantity.<\/p>\n<p>First, from a defense perspective, the natural gas serves as a way to achieve energy independence in the relatively short term, and exporting the gas diminishes this.<\/p>\n<p>Secondly, natural gas is the raw material for much of the petrochemical industry, and this could be used to establish such an industry in Israel.  A focus on exports would serve to subvert the development of this industry and the additional profits, and jobs, that they would create.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article notes that Israel appears to have made significant discoveries in offshore natural gas, but that access to foreign markets will be difficult: Israel can look forward to long-term energy security after the discovery of a huge off-shore natural gas field but obstacles lie ahead in exporting its output, experts said Thursday. Israel will &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1135,1016,1159],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-international-commerce","category-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187999"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}