US firm Noble Energy said today they have found “significant signs” of gas at an exploratory well in a new field off the coast of Israel.
Delek Drilling, the firm’s Israeli partner in the exploration project, said the Karish field could hold 2trillion cubic feet of gas (cfg), making it smaller than the two massive Tamar and Leviathan fields recently discovered in Israeli waters.
The new field is around 46 miles from the coastal port of Haifa. The Karish partners will publish a more detailed analysis of the data in about two months.
The Tamar field, which came online in March with an estimated 10trillion cfg, could meet Israel’s needs for decades and Leviathan, which is expected to begin production in 2016, is estimated to hold 19trillion cfg.
Israel, long reliant on energy imports, is struggling to find the balance of how much gas to keep and how much to export.
Exploration companies have argued that because Israel is a small market, further investment in the area could only be justified if there were an increased export quota.
Noble, which is also leading the Leviathan project, has said it cannot commit to further development until the government decides on its policy.
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