Israel's Greatest Ecological Catastrophe Unfolding in Arava Desert

The crude oil spill in the Arava Desert, southern Israel, is 'twice as bad as initially estimated,' according to the Israeli Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company....

"The volume of crude oil that spilled into the Arava Desert last week is 60 percent larger than the amount that was originally reported, the company responsible for the pipeline acknowledged on Sunday night," Haaretz, the Israeli news agency reported.
Although the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company (EAPC) initially reported of a spill between one million and 1.5 million liters, it later revised its calculation to three million liters. However, the company reported on Sunday a report issued by the company on Sunday has revealed that some five million liters of crude oil spilled out of the pipeline last Thursday, December 4.

"We were skeptical about the figures provided by the company from the start," a ministry official said on December 8, as cited by Haaretz.

Meanwhile damage control teams have already removed 13,000 tons of polluted soil in order to reduce the impact of the pipeline leak.

The Times of Israel notes that according to weather forecasts heavy rainfall is expected in the region later this week. It has sparked concerns among ministry officials over the possibility of further contamination of the area, including the Gulf of Eilat, home to rare coral reefs, which could be damaged by the leak, the media outlet stresses.

Haaretz notes, however, that dams are being erected in order to prevent the oil flowing into this area.

"It's the biggest ecological disaster Israel has seen. This is because of the material itself, crude oil, which is particularly hard to flush out, and the location of the spill [on the reserve]," Gilad Golub of Israel's Environmental Services Company told Agence France Presse.

The Times of Israel notes that Eilat residents have already filed a lawsuit against the pipeline operators referring to the tremendous environmental damage caused through negligence.

"Mellish is demanding NIS 220 million ($55m) to rehabilitate the environment in coordination with the Environment Minster and the Israel Nature and Parks authority, as well as another NIS 180 million ($45m) for the 48,000 residents of Eilat for damage to their health and discomfort caused by the ecological disaster," the media outlet reports.

More than 80 people on both sides of the Israel-Jordan border have complained about health problems caused by the spill.
[sputniknews.com]
8/12/14
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Related:

• Oil pipeline bursts near Israel-Jordan border.(the reason for the spill was under investigation)

• Ein Leck in einer Öl-Pipeline hat im Süden Israels nach Angaben des Umweltschutzministeriums eine der bisher schlimmsten Umweltkatastrophen des Landes zur Folge. "Millionen Liter Rohöl sind ausgelaufen", sagte Ran Lior, Sprecher des Ministeriums, am Donnerstag.

• Aus einer kaputten Pipeline in Israel fließt massenweise Rohöl - und verseucht kilometerweit ein Naturschutzgebiet im Süden des Landes...

Oil pipeline bursts near Israel-Jordan border.(the reason for the spill was under investigation)

An oil pipeline rupture has caused thousands of cubic metres of crude oil to spill into the Arava desert in southern Israel near the border with Jordan, officials said Thursday (Dec 4).The incident took place just north of the Red Sea resort city of Eilat and 500m from the frontier. 

The spill was "a couple of kilometres long", according to an Israeli environment ministry spokeswoman who was unable to give more specific information.

She said it was unclear whether there was any foul play and environmental authorities would open an investigation. "They have forces on the ground that prevented it from spreading to Jordan," she added.
The leak involved a 245km pipeline carrying crude oil from the southern port city of Ashkelon on Israel's Mediterranean coast to Eilat. 

Ronen Moshe, spokesman for the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company (EAPC), said the spill happened at 12.45 am on Thursday in a new section of the pipeline.
"The leak has been stopped," he said, adding that the reason for the spill was under investigation. "There are dozens of people in the field taking care of the aftermath," he said, indicating there had been no impact on supply. According to the company's website, the EAPC was founded in 1968 and serves as a land bridge for transporting crude oil between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

- AFP/el

  http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/oil-pipeline-bursts-near/1510182.html

  4/12/14

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• Ein Leck in einer Öl-Pipeline hat im Süden Israels nach Angaben des Umweltschutzministeriums eine der bisher schlimmsten Umweltkatastrophen des Landes zur Folge. "Millionen Liter Rohöl sind ausgelaufen", sagte Ran Lior, Sprecher des Ministeriums, am Donnerstag.

Israel signs 15-year natural gas deal with Jordan

REUTERS - Israel will sign a deal to supply natural gas from its Leviathan field to Jordan for 15 years, Israeli Energy Minister Silvan Shalom said on Wednesday.

Shalom said the agreement comes after many meetings with Jordanian officials but gave no other details.

An industry official who asked not to be identified said the deal was worth about $15 billion.

Leviathan, which holds an estimated 22 trillion cubic feet of gas, is controlled by Noble Energy and two units of the Delek Group.

Noble and Delek declined to comment although a Delek Drilling spokesman confirmed that senior officials from Delek and Noble were in Jordan. 
http://www.haaretz.com/business/1.613862
3/9/14
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• Egypt says not interested in Israeli gas as plans LNG imports...

• Cyprus to build gas plant with or without Israel.....

• Israel, Jordan, Palestinians to sign Red Sea-Dead Sea deal

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• CNN: Η Κύπρος δεν μπορεί να υποστηρίξει τερματικό. -Θα ήταν βιώσιμο αν η Κύπρος προχωρούσε σε συμφωνία με το Ισραήλ

Jordan oks mega oil shale project

Jordan's cabinet on Sunday approved an agreement to build a mega oil shale power plant in the Kingdom, Jordan's energy minister Mohammad Hamed said.

"The agreement will be signed between the Jordanian government and an international Estonian-Malaysian consortium within two weeks, and it's the first of its kind in the region," the minister said.

Jordan has over 40 billion tons of oil shale in reserves and the 2.4-billion-US dollar power plant will produce electricity through direct oil shale burning, the minister said.

The 470-megawatts power plant, which is expected to be operational in early 2018, will be built by Estonia's Eesti Energia, Malaysia's YTL Power International and Near East Investments of Jordan.

The Kingdom now imports about 96 percent of its energy at a cost of 2.8 billion dollars annually, or 21 percent of its gross domestic product. It plans to increase self-produced energy to 60 percent of its consumption by 2020.
Sources: Xinhua -  globaltimes.cn
30/6/14

Northwest Saudi Arabia enjoys rare snowfall

Rare snowfall in the north-west of Saudi Arabia on Sunday drew local residents and visitors to scenic mountainous areas to enjoy the spectacle.
Snow fell intermittently from dawn in the city of Tabuk near the Jordanian border, coating nearby mountains and roads with a sheet of white.

Local residents and visitors travelled up to 200 kilometers to Mount Allouz. Tabuk’s traffic police warned drivers against travelling up the steep and slippery mountain roads. Security, traffic and health services were on standby to organize traffic on icy roads. Two people died and another was injured in a jeep accident.
http://english.cntv.cn/program/asiatoday/20140217/105577.shtml
17/2/14 
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Rare snowfall in the north-west of Saudi Arabia on Sunday drew local residents and visitors to scenic mountainous areas to enjoy the spectacle.

Rare snowfall in the north-west of Saudi Arabia on Sunday drew local residents and visitors to scenic mountainous areas to enjoy the spectacle.

Rare snowfall in the north-west of Saudi Arabia on Sunday drew local residents and visitors to scenic mountainous areas to enjoy the spectacle.

Dead Sea: Environmentalists Question Pipeline Rescue Plan

An "historic" agreement between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians is supposed to save the shrinking Dead Sea. But some environmentalists believe the plan to pump water from the Red Sea could do the salt lake more harm than good.

Even as it shrinks in size, the Dead Sea, a turquoise blue shimmering salt lake, remains a mystical place. Boat jetties jut out into nothingness, abandoned as the water has retreated further and further; each year the level dropping by a meter. The Dead Sea is dwindling to nothing, deprived of water by humans.


 Where there once was water, there is now a crumbling coastline, which is already riddled with deep craters that can open up suddenly. Nonetheless, the lake's withered beauty still attracts many to its shores.
The only question is, for how long?
The Dead Sea is now set to be saved -- but the plans of its self-appointed savior may actually turn out to be more like euthanasia.
Last week, Israeli Energy Minister Silvan Shalom, together with his Jordanian and Palestinian counterparts, agreed to a joint project which, it was solemnly declared, would prevent the Dead Sea from drying out. At the same time, what Shalom described as an "historic agreement" would secure water supplies for the notoriously arid region -- and send a signal of international understanding in the Middle East.
Nothing But a Waste
But numerous environmentalists and the 20 Palestinian NGOs who spoke out in advance against the project argue that the acclaimed agreement is nothing but a waste.
The plan is to build a desalination plant in the Jordanian city of Aqaba on the Red Sea, which will then supply both the neighboring Israeli city of Eilat and southern Jordan with fresh water. The brine that is created in the desalination process will be pumped 180 kilometers through a pipeline to the Dead Sea.
Will this stop the Dead Sea from shrinking?
"Nonsense," says Gidon Bromberg simply. As director of the environmental organization Friends of the Earth Middle East, the Israeli lawyer has been involved with issues surrounding the Dead Sea for more than a decade.
What is taking place, Bromberg says, is not a ground-breaking project to save the lake, but simply a water exchange. Israel and Jordan want to build up their water supplies, and the supposedly economically-friendly rescue action is an excellent way to attract international money to do so.
Catastrophic Ecological Consequences
Bromberg is not the only one who thinks like this, primarily because the 200 million cubic meters of brine set to be pumped into the Dead Sea by 2017 at the earliest only make up about 10 percent of the water needed to halt the lake's retreat.
"The amount of water is not sufficient," says hydrogeologist Christian Siebert from the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in the German city of Halle, who is investigating how the decline of the water level in the Dead Sea is affecting aquifers in the region. "And the environmental consequences are not foreseeable."
What worries Siebert and environmentalists is the question of what will happen when mixing seawater and lake water.
Experiments carried out by Israeli microbiologists on behalf of the Geological Survey of Israel show that the transfusion of water from the Red Sea could have catastrophic ecological consequences for the Dead Sea. They could include: an uncontrolled growth of red or green algae; the proliferation of bacteria; the lake turning a rusty red color; and the formation of white gypsum crystals on the water's surface.
"The lake would be completely cloudy," says hydrogeologist Siebert. It would also be possible that the water from the Red Sea would not mix properly with the water from the Dead Sea because of different densities, but would rather form layers. In the worst case scenario, according to Siebert, microorganisms could establish themselves and convert the gypsum into noxious, putrid, stinking hydrogen sulfide.
The brine produced as the product of desalination is also usually contaminated with chemicals and copper.
Until now, people with skin conditions have been drawn to the Dead Sea because of the healing power of its waters. But who wants to bathe in a foul-smelling lake full of chemical waste?
Siebert and Bromberg agree that anyone wanting to save the Dead Sea must first save the Jordan River. It once supplied the salt lake with its water; now the flow has almost completely dried up. The river, which plays a prominent role in the Bible, is today just a miserable, dirty little trickle.
Water As a Weapon
An incredible 98 percent of the Jordan River's water is diverted by bordering countries, and more than half of that by Israel. Until two years ago, Syria and Jordan shared the rest; the Syrians have now largely been left out in the cold due to the country's civil war. The Palestinians claim about 5 percent.

To restore the river, Israel and Jordan would have to do without one-third of its water. It's a tall order in a region where water is also always a weapon, an instrument of power. Bromberg, therefore, has a different solution in mind, namely that the chemical companies on the shores of the Dead Sea, and especially the Israeli Dead Sea Works Company and the Jordanian Arab Potash Company, must finally relinquish some of the millions they make selling salts and other minerals.
In order to produce these substances, the firms allow water to evaporate from the salt lake in massive quantities. For this precious water, they pay nothing.
Translated from the German by David Knight.
 http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/environmentalists-question-pipeline-rescue-plan-for-the-dead-sea-a-939681.html
19/12/13
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Related:

• Israel, Jordan, Palestinians to sign Red Sea-Dead Sea deal

• NASA alert: Middle East loses fresh reserves size of Dead Sea in 7 years

• Το Ισραήλ κατηγορείται για «λεηλασία» της Νεκράς Θάλασσας 

• Jordan to launch 'first phase' of Dead Sea canal.

 

 

Israel, Jordan, Palestinians to sign Red Sea-Dead Sea deal

AFP - Representatives of Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians will on Monday sign a "historic" agreement to link the Red Sea with the shrinking Dead Sea, an Israeli minister said.
Energy and Regional Development Minister Silvan Shalom told army radio that under the agreement to be signed at the World Bank in Washington, water will be drawn from the Gulf of Aqaba at the northern end of the Red Sea.
Some will be desalinated and distributed to Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians, while the rest will be transferred in four pipes to the parched Dead Sea, which would otherwise dry out by 2050. 


Shalom noted the economic aspects of supplying cheap desalinated water to neighbouring states, the environmental angle of "saving the Dead Sea" and the "strategic-diplomatic" aspect of the deal, being signed at a time when peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians are floundering. 

"This is a breakthrough after many years of efforts," he said. "It is nothing less than a historic move."
According to Yediot, the Palestinian Authority's minister in charge of water issues, Shaddad Attili, and Jordanian Water Minister Hazem Nasser will be signing the agreement with Shalom.
Shalom said that following the signing, "an international tender will be issued for the entire project -- building the desalination plant in Aqaba and laying the first of the four pipes."

According to Yediot Aharonot newspaper, which first broke the story, the idea dates back to the 1994 signing of a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan.
The World Bank in 2012 published a feasibility study report on the project.
But Friends of the Earth Middle East and other environmental groups warned that a large influx of Red Sea water could radically change the Dead Sea's fragile ecosystem, forming gypsum crystals and introducing red algae blooms.
 france24
9/12/13
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Related:

• NASA alert: Middle East loses fresh reserves size of Dead Sea in 7 years

• Το Ισραήλ κατηγορείται για «λεηλασία» της Νεκράς Θάλασσας 

• Jordan to launch 'first phase' of Dead Sea canal.