Joel Rosenberg's Weblog
May 17, 2010

A,  recently-released report by the U.S. Department of Interior indicates that Israel has,  massive reserves of natural gas and oil,  supplies just offshore, lying under the Mediterranean.

"The U.S. Geological Survey estimated a mean 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and a mean of 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Levant,  Basin Province using a geology based assessment methodology," stated the report's executive summary.

Israelis,  for years have lamented that if God wanted to bless them with a "promised land" He could have given them the oil-rich Arabian peninsula. Thus,  the report has become big news in the Israeli media and the energy industry. Several oil and gas companies are already at work there and have made more modest discoveries in recent years. But this is by far the biggest development to date and some reports indicate Israel could begin using the natural gas "” and possibly exporting it "” within two years.

"A U.S. energy company announced [in March] that a project it is developing off the Israeli coast could soon end the country’s longtime dependence on natural gas imports," reported Ynet News, a major Israeli daily. "Noble Energy Chief Executive Charles D. Davidson said the Tamar gas field "“ set to become operational in 2012 "“ will allow Israel to meet its own energy needs, and potentially even become an exporter of fuel"¦.Tamar’s five wells are each expected to pump 150 million cubic feet of natural gas per day "“ a pace on par with the Houston company’s other wells operating in places like the Gulf of Mexico, he said. The company hopes to open operations in a second Israeli field, called Dalit, at a later time. ‚  The possibility of exporting fuel would mark a dramatic turnaround for Israel, a country in an oil-rich region that is notoriously empty of natural resources and has always relied heavily on fuel imports. The late Prime Minister Golda Meir famously lamented that Moses could have picked somewhere other than "˜the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil’ as a Jewish homeland. ‚  A national supply of natural gas could mean major energy savings for Israeli citizens, as well as revenue for the government from corporate taxes and profit royalties, Davidson said."

What intrigues me is that such developments are consistent with several Bible prophecies that indicate ‚  petroleum will be discovered in Israel in the last days, adding to the nation’s prosperity. For more details, please see ‚  Chapter Five of my 2006 non-fiction book, Epicenter: "FUTURE HEADLINE: ‚  ISRAEL DISCOVERS MASSIVE RESERVES OF OIL, GAS."