Palestinian authority plans to develop Gaza gas field

The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) plans to develop a natural gas field off the Gaza Strip coast at a cost of 1 billion US dollars, a PNA minister said on Monday.

Mohamed Mustafa, minister of economy, said in an emailed press statement that British Gas Co. and the Palestinian unity government will work together on developing the gas field.

A large field of natural gas was discovered in early 2000 off the coast of the Gaza Strip by British Gas. A deal was signed between the company and the PNA to produce gas and help the PNA improve its finances.

Mustafa, also deputy prime minister of the Palestinian unity government, stated that the project needs international political guarantees to make Israel committed to the agreement.

The gas field aims to generate power and serve industry to create new financial resources, said Mustafa.

Since its establishment in 1994, the PNA has been financially depending on international donations and the tax revenue dues Israel collects on its behalf and pays them back to its budget.

However, the PNA has been going through a crucial financial crisis after Israel withheld the tax revenue dues to punish the Palestinians after they decided to join 20 international treaties and agencies, including the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Mustafa said annual cost for energy import had reached 2 billion dollars and that "such a huge budget exhausts the Palestinian economy and that generating energy would save lots of money."
  Source:Xinhua - globaltimes.cn
24/2/15
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Palestinian Authority forms 'central operation rooms' to deal with snowstorm

The Palestinian Authority on Thursday formed several “central operation rooms” in the West Bank to deal with the snowstorm.

The PA also urged Palestinians to remain indoors and avoid driving their vehicles in the snow.

Municipality and Civil Defense workers were put on high alert and hospitals beefed up their medical staff in anticipation of the snowstorm.

The PA said that its emergency teams were also ready to open all major roads that could be blocked by the snow. 
  [jpost.com]
19/2/15
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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.