Tag it:

What with increased demand for oil in the ‘developing’ world, many say that the world’s last oil reserves will peak a mere three years from now. Oil industry executives and U.S. government official statistics stretch the time-frame to 2037¹. Either way, all agree that the end of the Oil Age is nigh, and likely to spark inter-regional conflicts over the last few drops.
What if somehow this eminent crisis is staved off, and rather than mass hysteria in the streets or nuclear face-offs between states competing for a few last precious drops, new ‘oil shale’ extraction technology appears on the scene? What if technology enables the planet to exploit massive sources of non-renewable energy - enough to last us another seemingly endless stream of decades.
Where else but in Israel, the pioneer in alternative energy technologies, might the process of building a seeming ‘life boat’ begin?² The government-owned company A.F.S.K. Industries has developed new oil shale extraction technology it claims makes oil shale mining ‘economical.’³ The new technology rides the tail of Shell Oil’s revelation of the development of ‘in situ conversion’ in fall of 2005.⁴
If the owner of A.F.S.K’s new technology, AFSAK Hom-Tov (recently transferred from the ownership of A.F.S.K. Industries CEOs Shimon Kazansky and Israel Feldman to Ofer Glazer, husband of heiress Shari Arison),⁵ receives approval to build the 700 M$ oil shale extraction plant in the southern Negev/Naqab, in Mishor Rotem⁶ (near Israel’s undeclared nuclear facility at Dimona), all of Israel’s electricity needs will be satisfied for the next half-century.⁷
But don’t forget, there is one resource more precious than oil in the Middle East - water. And oil shale extraction consumes more water than almost any other form of energy.
Oil shale will not save us from peak oil panic: It will create a greater panic over water.

When so-called ‘Alternative Energy’ is worse than Conventional
Oil shale is often classified as an “alternative” energy source because it has thus far hardly been tapped, for one reason only: It is extremely expensive to extract. Where it has been extracted, it is being phased out due to the impacts of extreme pollution.
Indeed, coal offers more oil when processed than oil shale ever will. According to John Laherrere, formerly of the Society of Petroleum Engineers/World Petroleum Congress, “As Petrole Informations noticed in 1972: One ton of coal can give 650 liters of oil while one ton of oil shale can give only 150 liters of shale oil. Production of oil shale should start only after that coal is completely depleted! Oil shale is classified by USDOE/EIA within lignite.”⁸
Oil shale, which is neither shale nor oil, is a messy synthetic substance derived from organic kerogen. Because of its complicated composition, every attempt to cheaply tap oil shale over the past three decades has failed, and investors almost universally associate oil shale with huge economic losses. Some have managed to develop oil shale suitable for transportation fuel, particularly military aircraft.⁹ Oil shale has also supplied Estonia’s electricity needs for several decades.
But shale oil got phased out in Estonia.¹⁰ Why? As Jesper Jrrgensen, at Estonia’s Commission of the Environment says, "Oil-shale is by far the biggest pollution problem in Estonia. It is a very poor fuel that creates as much emissions as energy."¹¹ According to the Estonian journal, Oil Shale (2004), the only other country in the world which produces a major share of its electricity via oil shale found that about 97% of its air pollution, 86% of its total waste and 23% of its water pollution came from the power industry.¹² Worst of all, laments Journal editor Anto Raukus, a shocking 91% of Estonia’s abundant water resources were consumed by the power industry!¹³ Wherever it has been attempted, whether in Estonia, Australia, or the U.S. Mountain states, oil shale processing has required stellar amounts of water - i.e. 3 gallons per barrel for conventional processing - and has left behind immense amounts of toxic wastewater.¹⁴
Meanwhile, in Israel, the biblical Jordan River is now a sewage-stricken trickle,¹⁵ the Sea of Galilee is shrinking rapidly,¹⁶ and the ancient Dead Sea is dessicating.¹⁷ According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a cumulative 2 billion m² deficit in Israel's renewable water resources has led to the deterioration of Israel’s potable aquifers into brackish or otherwise polluted waters.¹⁸ According to the Jewish National Fund (JNF), population growth and boosted consumption patterns have led Israel to over-consume its water resources by 25 percent. Israel's water resources currently yield 449 billion gallons each year, but population growth and a general increase in the standard of living have boosted annual consumption to 580 billion gallons.¹⁹ In a country with one of the more severe water crises in the world, the Ministry of Infrastructure is considering one of the most water-intensive energy forms on the planet?
In the end, by prioritizing oil shale, the Israeli government is replacing one shortage with another, even more dire, deficit.
There’s more. The pre-refining process to obtain synthetic oil generates ash and a carcinogenic waste rock which expands by around 30% after processing due to a popcorn effect from the heating.²⁰ Oil shale extraction produces four times more greenhouse gas than conventional oil. In essence, if we thought the pollution generated by conventional liquid oil was bad, the health and environmental impacts of oil shale are far worse. The new technology will also produce two tons of "environmentally problematic refinery byproducts" every year, according to the Ministry of Infrastructure itself.²¹
In 1985 the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) conclusively confirmed that human contact with heated oil shale leads to the development of malignant tumors.²² With cancer rates in the Negev/Naqab higher than the rest of Israel – according to a 2004 preliminary study funded by the largest toxic waste facility in the Middle East (Ramat Hovav) – the region cannot withstand another polluting industry.²³
It must be noted that in the area of Mishor Rotem, an existing phosphate plant is already emitting nuclear residue into the vicinity of Dimona (radon is embedded in phosphate deposits). In August of 2004, at least 100 storks migrating between Africa and Europe died a day after stopping to drink from Rotem Amfert’s toxic waste water pools, near the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona.²⁴ As the Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported in March 2006, the environmental picture is so dismal that, despite a desperate need for more job prospects in the Negev/Naqab, the southern planning committee recently turned down plans by Rotem Apart to develop another phosphate mine in the area.²⁵

Not Greening, But Blackening, the Negev/Naqab
The ‘pioneers’ of Israel planted a pine forest in Yeruham. They planted palms in Beer Sheva. They told their children to be proud their parents had greened an empty land. During history and science lessons, teachers didn’t tell their schoolchildren that neither the pines nor palms they planted were indigenous to the desert. The children never learned that the pines often shriveled up in the desert sun and those that survived would never grow so tall. They never learned that the species of palm planted would suck up 30 gallons of water a day, per tree, in the most parched part of an exceedingly dry country.²⁶
Israeli schoolchildren were told that, just as the rest of the land was once ‘empty,’ the Negev/Naqab is the last open frontier, with plenty of space for development of all kinds.
While this generation of Israeli 30-some-things were sitting in 1^st grade geography lessons, the Israeli government approved plans to build phosphate mines. The Israeli government built a nuclear facility.  The Israeli government built a toxic waste facility. The Israeli government built dump after dump, factory after factory. The Israeli government built immense military airports and firing ranges, and the army took 60% of 60% of the country for its purposes.²⁷ Against a belated outburst of citizen alarm, and the opposition of generally ‘pro-road’ experts such as Hebrew University Geographer Eran Feitelson, the government passed plans to build the Trans-Israel highway full scale through the Negev/Naqab.²⁸
All of this environmentally destructive infrastructure and industry was constructed within a slim triangle of toxicity between Arad, Dimona and Beer Sheva. Into a sliver of land comprising less than 2% of the Negev/Naqab, the Israeli government concentrated over 150,000 indigenous people who once ranged their familiar portion of the entire Middle East.²⁹  In this area known as the Siyag ‘reservation’(Arabic for ‘fence’), to which the indigenous Bedouin have been limited since the 1950's, the government also worked hard to bring several successions of Russian, Ethiopian and Mizrachi immigrants to ‘offset’ the ‘demographic threat’ the Negev/Naqab Arabs posed to the creation of a Jewish majority in the south of the country.
Today, counter to the impression of open space and wilderness bestowed upon Israeli schoolchildren from the age of five onward,  the Negev/Naqab is actually quite full, and completely demarcated. Heavily populated with soldiers rather than residents,³⁰  Israel’s Negev/Naqab is full to the brim with military areas, zoned off-limits to civilian use.
Oil developers are in all likelihood banking on an initial lack of outcry over the building of a shale oil plant, for the very fact that it is to be built in the heart of the poorest parts of Israel, in areas with high concentration of Arabs, immigrants (Ethiopians and Russians), and poor Mizrachim (Middle Eastern Jews) and Ashkenazim (European Jews) – citizen-sectors with little economic power and tenuous political clout.
However, some of the largest reserves of shale oil in Israel lie under the homes of the 50,000 residents of the well-off town of Beit Shemesh, located mid-way between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Will the oil developers attempt to claim that their ‘in situ’ extraction process will solve the problem, cooking the kerogen and sucking it out from beneath the feet of Beit Shemesh citizens without leaving their water undrinkable and their land rife with carcinogens?

Alternatives?
Thinking ahead, one might conclude: Relying on oil shale could prove more disastrous than the sudden depletion of the earth’s last liquid oil reserves. If this technology has the potential to catch hold outside the Israeli context (as it might - given Shell Oil’s announcement of new shale oil extraction technology only a few months before A.F.S.K.’s revelation) we could see the emergence of an even more frightening scenario resulting from intensive water and air pollution: Average citizens struggling afford privatized water, unable to pay the costs of commodified clean air, suffering wars with neighboring states over the last clean water and air resources. If Israel’s history of conflict over water is any indication, the global fight for water could be even more serious than the fight for oil. Already, 18 of the 21 military conflicts over water worldwide have occurred between Israel and her neighbors.³¹
Nevertheless, in a statement responding to AFSAK Hom-Tov’s request for a permit to mine the oil shale and for government funding to build a factory to manufacture the synthetic oil, Senior Deputy Director General of the Ministry of National Infrastructure Eli Ronen wrote: "The ministry will promote with its blessings the initiative that will allow the production of oil."³²
Even with the development of the new extraction technology, the economic cost of refining shale-oil will remain considerably higher than that of harnessing solar energy, not to mention in environmental terms. The immediate and ultimate challenges of oil shale exploitation rival the challenges of harnessing sun energy, while failing to match solar’s long-term economic and environmental potential.
There is still the possibility of fulfilling Israel's potential as a leader in the world of alternative energy, a leader in reducing dependence on polluting energy forms. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "an estimated 10 square kilometers of the Negev/Naqab desert receive an annual average of solar energy equal to all of the electricity generated by the Israel Electric Corporation - a process that consumes about one-third of the country's entire fuel imports."³³ In turn, the oil shale power plant developers claim their proposal will cut oil imports by a third. In other words: We can build a highly toxic energy plant across several kilometers, or we can build a clean, healthy solar plant across 10, and cut oil imports by the same amount.
Better yet, we could do something truly radical, building a variety of solar plants in appropriate regions throughout the desert, and fulfilling all of our power needs.  According to Prof. David Faiman, director of Ben-Gurion University's National Solar Energy Center, solar energy plants in the Negev could theoretically produce all the country's power on 225 square kilometers of suitable land.³⁴ The Negev is approximately 12,000 square km, or which at least 7,000 km is reserved for military training and other IDF uses. Free up military terrain, and suddenly we can meet all of our energy needs, far beyond the 50-year limits of the oil shale reserves. Whatever challenges remain in the way, they can be overcome.
Solar has a proud history in Israel. Israeli scientists were the first to develop solar energy: to develop the first solar absorption coatings - black enamels that made it possible for solar panels to retain a higher proportion of the sun's energy, and by 1967 about one in twenty households heated their water with the sun. Today, more than 90% of Israeli households own solar water heaters.³⁵ The chief reason Israel failed to extend its application of solar technology to other realms was the sudden drop in the price of oil. With the price of oil at over 75$ a barrel in April 2006, the initial cost of investing in solar energy doesn’t look so daunting.³⁶
Given all of the above, why hasn’t the Israeli government yet sorted the paperwork necessary for implementation of several-year-old plans to build the first solar plant in Israel - the largest in the world?
The Israeli Ministry of Infrastructure owns several oil-prospecting and oil-tech companies, including A.F.S.K. Industries. In contrast, the government does not own a single solar or other renewable energy company. It appears that the government has more of an interest in seeing oil revenues than it does in overcoming the challenges involved with going solar and fulfilling its self-stated goals to produce just 2% of electricity from renewable resources by 2007.³⁷
In addition to AFSAK Hom-Tov, one industry that could potentially benefit from the oil shale plant is the cat-litter and industrial absorption manufacturer Alganite®, also linked with a government company. The material, alganite, is a by-product of the shale oil extraction process, and the product’s namesake is a joint venture of a private corporation and the Ministry of Infrastructure’s own shale-oil prospecting company, PAMA. PAMA, in turn, is a subsidiary of the overwhelmingly government-owned Oil Refineries Ltd., Israel Electric Corporation Ltd., and Israel Chemicals Ltd., Israel’s top 2^nd , 3^rd and 4^th companies by sales.³⁸
Not long ago, AFSAK Hom-Tov and their lawyer, former Energy Minister Moshe Shahal, met with Eli Ronen, Senior Deputy Director General of the Ministry of National Infrastructures. Ronen, who has lingered through more than a decade of Ministry transitions, "told us his office had come up with the same figures in 1995," explained the company’s development representative Shlomo Abramovitch in late March.³⁹
The process appears to be slower for the company behind the solar power project, Solel. Despite the Ministry’s proclaimed interest in the solar project, the government has been navigating the logistics at a snails-pace. In 2003, the solar plant had been preliminarily approved by the Israeli government, and a site selected, but the project had not yet been budgeted. Three years later, the approval of the solar plant was announced yet again.
Yet according to Amit Mor of "Eco-Energy" - who consulted for both the solar power plant and the shale oil plant -- the solar plant has immense profit potential. A team of economists headed by Mor found that an investment in a gradual establishment of solar power plants of 2,500MV in output by 2025 will generate a profit of $2 Billion into the Israeli market, or $180 million per year. In addition, up to 5,000 new jobs will be created in directly operating the technology, in addition to thousands of jobs.⁴⁰

What of Renewables?
What next lies in store for Israel and its not-so-pristine ‘last frontier’?
In 1989, the Israeli government conducted a strategic plan for sustainable development, but it only looked ahead four decades, of which nearly two have passed.⁴¹ From the perspective of the environmental justice organization Bustan – working to develop bio-gas models with a coalition of environmental and Bedouin groups ranging from the Arava Institute of Environmental Studies to the Ben Gurion University Center for Women’s Health Studies⁴² – there is no excuse for the relative lack of government investment in renewable energy options and failure to contend with the health impacts of severe pollution on the Negev/Naqab poor. It is clear that solar has immense possibilities in Israel’s Negev/Naqab Desert. This is particularly the case in the Unrecognized Villages throughout the Negev/Naqab, where Israeli citizens often live right under power lines and next to electrical plants, suffering the resultant health effects, while barred from connection to the grid.⁴³
As companies like Shell and AFSAK Hom-Tov reveal new technologies in the nick of time – and in suspiciously close succession – we must ask whether a less environmentally-regulated Israel may be used as a testing-ground by foreign corporations loathe to see governments transferring incentives and investments in oil exploration to companies engaged in solar, wind, and bio-gas research and applications.
Whether Shell and AFSAK Hom-Tov are bluffing our governments in order to eek out the last possible drops of government investment before the fossil fuel market collapses, or they have truly created technology that can makes oil shale profitable for corporations, we must demand that our governments devote their energies to far more than 2% renewables. If the proposed technology is a teetering sham, we will have lost our last few years to commit to research and investment in renewables, prior to the end of oil. If it is a true discovery, we will have doomed ourselves to severe global warming, a cancer crisis, and irreparable poisoning of our water and air.
As the decline of oil rapidly approaches, it is more than likely that innovative technologies can save us - it’s simply a question of how we prioritize investment in alternative energy research and applications. Do we invest in shale oil as our alternative? Or do we prioritize incomparably less harmful alternatives such as bio-gas and solar power? The answer, from the perspective of the average citizen aware of a strange taste from the tap, saddened by summer-time swimming  warnings, gasping from a newly-acquired case of asthma, and attuned to the bizarre change in seasonal weather patterns, is clearer than it has ever been.
Israelis in particular have an obligation -- to the 2,000-year dream of Jews envisioning a utopic homeland, to the Palestinians at whose expense they realized their State, and to the children of Israel/Palestine who will have to contend with the decisions of their parents -- to remember their ideals, to envision their home as it should be, and to make it so.