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Gas is great.

It's cleaner than coal.

We're lucky to have it.

But, are we safe to process it so close to home? In short, no - and we don't have to.

Will natural gas be

a solution or a disaster in Israel?

Wanna do something about it?

Nobel Energy, Delek and other companies are refining offshore gas in a way that many professors warn will tragically poison Israel's drinking water, pollute the beaches and coastal air.

We can prevent this health crisis by forcing them to process the fuel 120 km offshore.

Even if a disaster won't toxify our water, every day they dump tons of waste into the sea.

We don't only need to worry about a huge accident or attack. Day to day production of natural gas is toxic when it's this close to communities.

If it's 120 km away over the well, they are required to pump it back into the earth's crust where it came from instead of

slowly poisoning us.

120 km away is much safer.

After analyzing similar gas processing factories, university scientists in Israel and the USA have found that with the ~10 kilometer distance from the shore, toxic air pollution will be between 10 to 50 times higher than US-EPA acceptable levels. This means that people who live near the coast will have much higher chances of getting cancer, birth defects and other illnesses. And then they plan to dump toxic waste directly into the sea water, risking our drinking water.

These estimates are for normal, day to day production. An accident or attack would make the crisis much worse. Coastal populations near off-shore disasters suffer for decades. According to Professor Rick Steiner, they pay with their health, economy, environment and psychological well being.

If we force the companies involved to move production 120 kilometers from the coast:

the concentration of toxins will reach safe levels
the gas company will need to return toxic waste deep into the sea floor, instead of dumping it into the sea. Tragically, dumping toxic waste is what they currently do near Ashdod and plan to do near Haifa.
gas condensate will be transported via ships, rather than pipes, which according to expert water geologist Yossi Bar, will almost certainly leak and pollute the groundwater for decades

הצטרפו בפייסבוק

But, aren't there new technologies?

What about Closed Loop Systems?

Noble Energy and the Israeli Ministries of Energy and Environmental Protection claim that closed loop systems reduce pollution by 99.7%. They say that the factories off the coast near Ashdod, where we desalinate half of our drinking water, don't have this new tech, but Leviathan will.

When Professor Adi Wolfson asked them to show us examples of working closed loop systems anywhere in the world, they couldn't. Why? Because as far as we know, they don't exist beyond a theoretical level.

In fact, they have a history of "inaccurate" claims. For example, before starting production at the Tamar gas refinery, Noble gave official estimates of toxic pollution that were 20 times less than actual pollution measurements after production began. Basically, they're making profits that we'll pay for at the hospital.

These dangerous levels of toxins are in the air and drinking water of residents in the center of Israel.

Most major off shore refineries are far from land for obvious reasons.

Why so dangerously close in Israel?

It's not clear, because many of these decisions were made behind closed doors. What we do know is that Israeli tycoons who have been polluting us for years have plans for huge, toxic chemical industrial areas based on gas byproduct condensate near Yokne'am and between Netanya/Hadera.

Today only storage has been approved but the next steps are obvious. To maximize the profits of a few, everyone's water, air and health are in grave danger.

We could be providing jobs and improving the world by manufacturing Israel's wealth of clean-tech startups instead of processing toxic chemicals in a war zone. We need clean water and air more than we need maximum profits.