For decades, Israelis have taken perverse pride in what they lacked — oil and

gas deposits. Few countries had looked so hard with so little result. Obliged to live off their

wits, Israelis turned their country into a high­tech haven.

But enormous deposits of natural gas have been detected off the country’s northern coast.

Last year, the United States Geological Survey estimated that more than 120 trillion cubic fee

t of recoverable gas reserves lie beneath the waters of the Eastern Mediterranean, most of it

within Israeli territory. Several months after the report, another field of 8.7 trillion cubic feet

was found off Israel and a second, twice that size, was detected and is thought to have a 50

percent chance of proving out.....continue reading