Last Updated: July 2016
Overview
Map of Israel
![Map of Israel Map of Israel](/congress115th/20190110153452im_/https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/images/country_maps/ISR.jpg)
- Israel, once dependent on imports to supply its energy, now has a growing natural gas industry. Recent discoveries of offshore natural gas fields have the potential to provide adequate amounts of energy to meet domestic demand, while allowing the country to export excess volumes.
- In 2015, Israel's primary energy consumption came mainly from petroleum and other liquids (43%), natural gas (30%), and coal (26%), according to the latest BP Statistical Review of World Energy. In the ten years from 2005 to 2015, energy consumption from coal has decreased by 15%. At the same time, energy consumption from natural gas grew more than fourfold.
Petroleum and other liquids
- As of January 2016, Israel had estimated proved oil reserves of 14 million barrels. The country has virtually no crude oil and condensate production, but in February 2015, exploratory drilling for oil began in the southern part of Golan Heights. Additionally, plans to begin drilling at a site near the Dead Sea are scheduled for November 2017. The site, discovered in 1995 but abandoned until recently, is estimated to contain from 7 to 11 million barrels of oil reserves. Oil discoveries in the Golan Heights and near the Dead Sea have the potential to positively impact Israel's quest for energy independence.
- In 2015, Israel consumed 240 thousand barrels per day (b/d), all met by imports. A majority of Israel's oil imports are from crude oil, and the country exports small quantities of refined products. Israel plans to reduce its dependence on oil imports through an expansion of its rapidly-growing natural gas sector.
- Israel is home to two refineries, with a combined capacity of nearly 300,000 b/d. The capacity of the Haifa refinery is 197,000 b/d, while Ashdod's capacity is about 100,000 b/d after an upgrade in 2013.
Natural gas
- Historically, Israel had been an importer of natural gas, with a substantial portion of its natural gas needs supplied through the Arish-Ashkelon pipeline from Egypt and a small amount from liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports from a floating regasification terminal installed in 2013. The recent discoveries of natural gas fields are expected to provide enough fuel to meet Israel's rising domestic needs, and extra gas resources will likely be exported. In 2015, Israel consumed 297 Bcf of natural gas, nearly all met by domestic production.
- At the end of 2015, Israel had proved natural gas reserves of 7 trillion cubic feet (Tcf). Energy exploration over the past several years has uncovered significant natural gas resources in Israel, primarily in the country's offshore areas.
- The Mari-B field—discovered in 2000—provided the first significant volumes of domestically-produced natural gas to Israel's markets. However, in 2012 production plummeted as the field entered the final stages of depletion, and the field stopped producing gas in 2013. In prior years, the Mari-B field met up to 40% of Israel's natural gas demand.
- The Tamar field was discovered offshore near Haifa in 2009. Israel began commercial production from this field in late March 2013. Over half of Israel's electricity generation requirements and virtually all of its industrial fuel needs are met by the Tamar field's production. The natural gas produced from the Tamar field travels through existing onshore facilities at Ashdod via a pipeline that links to existing infrastructure at the Mari-B development site.
- In 2013, the Tamar Southwest field was discovered 8 miles southwest of the Tamar field. This is a smaller, separate field that is estimated to contain 700 Bcf of natural gas. Negotiations regarding the development of Tamar Southwest are taking place between the Israeli government and the gas companies that discovered the field.
- The most significant find offshore Israel is the Leviathan field, located approximately 80 miles off the coast and situated in water that is more than 5,000 feet deep. Assessments of the Leviathan field indicate that there is around 22 Tcf of recoverable natural gas in place. In May 2016, the Israeli government approved a deal allowing the Leviathan partners to begin development on the field. Exports from the Leviathan field are expected to begin by 2019.
- In 2014, the Royee field was discovered nearly 100 miles off the coast. Best estimates place Royee's reserves at 3.2 Tcf, but range from 1.9 Tcf and 5 Tcf.
- Most recently, the Daniel East and Daniel West fields were discovered off the coast of Israel. Preliminary estimates show the reserves of these adjoining fields to total around 9 Tcf, which is nearly the size of the Tamar field. Exploratory work to corroborate the estimates is underway, and no date has been set for development.
- There are competing proposals to develop pipelines and LNG infrastructure to support natural gas exports, but deliberations about how Israel will get its natural gas to market are ongoing. As of 2016, the focus is on developing regional gas pipelines. A natural gas pipeline to Jordan is under construction and scheduled to begin operating in 2017, with a second pipeline slated to come online sometime after that.
- As Israel shifts to become an energy exporter, multiple export agreements have been proposed with various countries. In January 2014, the Israeli government approved plans to supply the Palestinian Authority with natural gas from the Leviathan field once production commences. Noble Energy signed a natural gas sales agreement with two Jordanian companies to provide supplies from the Tamar field in early 2014. The initial term of the agreement with Jordan is 15 years, for a total gross quantity of 66 Bcf, with exports beginning in 2016. Other countries that have entered into proposed agreements with Israel include Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus.
- In June 2013, the Israeli Cabinet approved exports of 40% of the country's natural gas reserves. With the 40% cap in place, Israel's reserves are estimated to supply the country for 25 years.
Electricity
- While coal has long been Israel's primary source of electricity, its use is declining as the country's natural gas sector continues its rapid growth and natural gas-fired generating capacity supplants coal-fired generating capacity. As of 2016, natural gas from the Tamar field supplied more than half of Israel's electricity needs.
Project Feedback
Read what others are saying about this project.
06/20/2017 - Norway
Your reports are well structured and accessible. EIA is a very valuable source for my research.
06/20/2017 - Belgium
No doubt, your country analyses are key to our monitoring of country risks, and I expect them to be more and more useful in an energy transition context.
06/19/2017 - Hong Kong
This is exceedingly helpful, I cannot do without these analyses. The references are particularly useful in further understanding of the issues.
06/19/2017 - Argentina
I belong to an ngo dealing with energy policies in Argentina, and their connections with the international public policies and energy markets. Your information is very useful for me. THANKS
06/19/2017 - North Carolina, United States
I am a former U.S. State Department official now teaching energy courses at the university level. The EIA products are highly reliable and up-to-date.
06/19/2017 - Turkey
I am a high-ranking Govt. official dealing with international relations and diplomacy. I have been resorting to your data for more than 10 years. It provides to me useful background for the structure and developments in the energy sector, both on country basis and on global scope. Useful and helpful data for my work. Thanks sincerely.
05/17/2017 - Argentina
It keeps me updated. Very useful information.
05/17/2017 - Denmark
The info provided regularly by the EIA is of very good quality and of high value, thanks.
04/16/2017 - United Kingdom
I am using the total electricity net consumption of U.S. But I am confused the description of the data. i.e. What is the net consumption means? Is it seasonally adjusted data? Thanks!
01/18/2017 - District of Columbia, United States
Clicking on the first graphic on this page zooms in way too much (the height of the graphic is 3x the size of the pop-up) and only the vertical scroll bar works. http://www.eia.gov/beta/international/regions-topics.cfm?RegionTopicID=CSR#
12/19/2016 - China
Where can I find the previous function that could enable to view and download selected data in tables ? Thanks.
12/06/2016 - Spain
Excelent work. A few suggestions regarding CO2 emissions: - 2012 data for Argentina, Brazil and India (at least) are missing... - there is a strange jump in Germany data between 2009 and 2010 Thanks again
12/01/2016 - Italy
First of all, congrats for this huge and helpful dataset!Secondly, how can I recover the data for Biodiesel production and see them in the chart/table? The Source button seem not to do any changes.. Thanks a lot again
11/28/2016 - Colombia
It would be easier, if when using metric units, instead of writing "billion kWh" you would specify whether this is 10^9 (as in english speaking countries) or 10^12 (everywhere else). Am I correct to assume 1 billion kW equal 1 GW?
11/19/2016 - Missouri, United States
International energy - consumption per capita years 2010 and 2011 seem wildly out of line with the previous years. US goes for 308 to 69,595 in 2010? Seems incorrect
11/11/2016 - Indiana, United States
I very much liked the previous version where excel downloaded data was much easier to work with. With this new version and the way it generates excel files when we download data, it takes me a huge amount of time to effectively use a downloaded file.
11/11/2016 - Virginia, United States
Per capita consumption data for 2011 by continent is coming up strangely. For global consumption of 529 Quad BTUs, it's showing per capita 9.5 trillion BTUs (which would assume a world pop. ~56,000).
11/02/2016 - India
Hi, great work with the interface. However, there are parts of the database that we could access in the previous version, that we are unable to access here (Imports and exports of petroleum crude and products, consumption of renewable energy in QTBTU among others). It would be great if these issues were cleared up asap so as to improve usability and access to data. Thank you!
10/24/2016 - India
Hi, We are unable to download crude oil and refined petroleum products imports by country. Kindly help.
10/13/2016 - Iran
Can you please create new links for your new things? I just saved a link for total renewable electricity net consumption, every time I just use this link address, but this time because of your update, it was not found. It makes me confused, I need this data in excel format, I search all of your website, I did not find this variable data/
10/11/2016 - New York, United States
The old system to download data was much easier - why fix something that worked well. I saw a comment that person can download all countries - I can not find that. Can you please direct me to it - thanks
10/01/2016 - Texas, United States
I'm just curious why the data period ends at 2013 - it's now Oct 2016 - seems like there should be data at least thru 2015. Has the beta site been replaced? Am I just in the wrong place?
09/28/2016 - Japan
I'm using the data for elec. generation (e.g. PV or wind) for my own research. Before this version, the data were down to 3 to 4 decimal places. However, only 1 decimal seems to be shown in Beta. It would be more useful and helpful for research if some options for more decimal place were added or units could be modified (e.g. other than billion kWh for generation). Thanks.
09/13/2016 - Norway
Hi, this gives me a very interesting picture of the global energy sector. Thank you.
08/29/2016 - Texas, United States
The organization of downloaded CSV data makes the data almost unusable. All headers for each country are shown as having equal value to the country itself so the data cannot be sorted without losing the country identification. I downloaded All Countries>Crude Oil and Lease Condensate Production. Column B makes every heading equal i.e., the country and various information headings. It is unfortunate that a download cannot be directly used but it is frustrating that as an expert Excel user I cannot easily determine a way to organize the data in a way that makes it usable. Thanks, Art Berman
08/16/2016 - Texas, United States
Really helpful and easy to use.
08/12/2016 - United Kingdom
Excellent. This is much easier to navigate and use.
07/27/2016 - Brazil
Excelent job! What does the "other liquids" in Total Petroleum and Other Liquids Production 2015 include?
07/18/2016 - India
Very useful data. However, it would be great if you could mention how much of India's energy (especially oil and gas) imports come by sea, in order to get a clearer picture of India's energy imports.
06/23/2016 - United Kingdom
I was using your import figures for china i.e. the pie chart for percentage world wide imports 2014 and when added up it is 99% rather than 100.
06/22/2016 - Japan
More new information will be helpful to understand global enegy situation.
06/15/2016 - Ecuador
Srs, I am probably one of the thousands readers that are eager to learn of the new information produced by EIA. Excellent, by the way. OPEC report on revenue is very informative. Our governments always keep us in the dark. Why???. Thank you
06/07/2016 - United Kingdom
Amazing data, thank you very much!
05/25/2016 - China
Very helpful information!! Well researched, clear figures and graphs.
05/18/2016 - California, United States
There is no data available for the petroleum or natural gas reserves in the U.S.A.
05/01/2016 - Australia
It is incredibly frustrating trying to view the data you want. Today I simply want to view the imports of crude oil in bbld in South Africa. BTU is a completely unhelpful metric.
04/22/2016 - California, United States
2014?? Where are the production numbers of 2015 and up 4/22/16?
04/03/2016 - United Kingdom
Fantastic resource. Very well researched, clear and easy figures and graphs. Well organised too. Incredible useful!
03/08/2016 - District of Columbia, United States
What a handy tool, thanks!
03/06/2016 - New Jersey, United States
Well organized information with easy access.
02/15/2016 - West Virginia, United States
Very helpful information!
02/14/2016 - China
I like the old version which had a country brief.
02/09/2016 - Saudi Arabia
Excellent work for the country analysis. However, i'm struggling to cite the South African country analysis report....would appreciate if you could sent it
01/30/2016 - Spain
Your website is very useful for me as a teacher, particularly the world thematic maps. My students like it as well. Thanks a lot!
01/22/2016 - Vietnam
Useful data for my work. Thanks sincerely.
01/04/2016 - Canada
Best government website ever
01/02/2016 - Turkey
Goood
12/29/2015 - Michigan, United States
We use your 'Total Electricity Net Consumption' data for comparing countries for a market potential index we create each year. Data in the previous years was available up to 5 decimal places. However, data is available with only 1 decimal place this year (through the beta interface) and comparing countries became a challenge because there are too many countries with the same values now. Is there a way to download the full data-set with all the decimal points available?
12/22/2015 - United Kingdom
Brilliant bit of website, made my life a thousand times easier!
12/06/2015 - Argentina
Excellent!!
11/29/2015 - Malaysia
May I know if there is a latest write up on Malaysia year 2015. The one I have obtained is 2014.
11/21/2015 - Virginia, United States
Terrific article on Brazil...thank you.
11/20/2015 - Egypt
I note that the analysis of energy in Israel in this site is not covered in details as other countries?
11/17/2015 - Michigan, United States
Great PDF file on Canada's energy and trade success! Exactly what I needed to bring me up to speed for my research on Michigan and on the Midwest - thanks! (Mike at McGuire Research)
11/15/2015 - California, United States
Why are your maps so hard to copy and past? It should be easy to get a nice graph of yours.
11/12/2015 - Alabama, United States
I work with Excel spreadsheets. I looked at your Excel download function and examined your Excel spreadsheet. It appears that if I am going to load the data into my spreadsheets, I will have to do one line at a time, each country individualy.
10/06/2015 - United Kingdom
The analysis on South Korea was a very interesting and worthwhile read. Great to see such an informed analysis presented with tables to illustrate it
09/30/2015 - France
Excellent interface, very very efficient. Having global data is definitely a plus. Too bad data goes up to 2012 and does not include 2013 and 2014. Comments coming from an IT manager used to major systems with large databases.
09/12/2015 - India
I always rely on data published by EIA to make various comparisons and analysis reports. This tool makes my job much easier.
09/11/2015 - Russia
Amazing tool, thank you for such a useful application for data export .
08/16/2015 - Colorado, United States
So... Pretty! Really appreciate you guys going the extra mile with your data tools, this makes my research so much more effective. You guys have been an utter joy to work with (not a typical experience for government bureaucracy), and this new beta is the icing on the cake. Thanks for the hard work you have put in to make this information clear and understandable! Looking forward to seeing what you guys cook up in the future.
06/09/2015 - District of Columbia, United States
Why can't I download any of this to spreadsheets? Why can't I download multiple years?
06/01/2015 - Nigeria
Dear Sirs, I have been using your data for almost 20 yrs, in particular the international Petroleum data. I like the granularity provided, by country by month. Unfortunately it seems from the beta site, that I can only access the annual data and only download as a CSV file. Is that correct? regards Casper
05/31/2015 - Virginia, United States
Where are the country pages!!!? I am writing a book chapter and referenced your site, where I found terrific info on India and Japan several months ago. Unfortunately, it appears you deleted those pages. Why?
05/27/2015 - Antarctica
I really love this beautiful webpage! It is very wonderful:) I love learning about this stuff!
05/25/2015 -
I need to access country profiles in .pdf form.
05/20/2015 - New York, United States
Thank you for all the info and help over the past few years. Before the layout, I was able to find annual #s of net exports of petro for each country, and now I have no idea where it is.
05/20/2015 - New York, United States
I am looking for bbl and bcf , not Btu , can you tell me where to look for country's oil bbl and gas in bcf? Thanks
05/20/2015 - Canada
Where can I find the original spreadsheets with the country data for Crude + Condensate and the one for all liquids. The new look is too complicated for me. The spreadsheet is more easily used for good analysis.
05/19/2015 - Texas, United States
Would like a link to the pdf of the entire country analysis brief.