Natural gas finding in Israel estimated at 95 billion dollars

Today it was reported that there a substantial amount of Natural gas found in an offshore drilling off the coast of Israel.

Leviatan – the Natural gas drilling project which is owned by (in brackets the percent of ownership): Delek drilling (22.67%) , Avner (22.67%) , Ratio (15%) and Nobel Energy (39.66%), was reported today to contain an estimated amount of over 16 TCF (trillion cubic feet) Natural gas.

This recent finding was reported to be the biggest Natural gas caches this year for offshore drilling worldwide, and is nearly twice the amount of Natural gas caches that were found last year in the drilling area Tamar – another offshore drilling project off the shores of Israel.

As a result of this news the stocks of the above-mentioned companies rose substantially, with Delek drilling rising by 5.12%, Avner by 4.44% and Ratio by 10.27% at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

This Natural gas finding is estimated to be worth roughly 95 billion USD (before discount), and could have a very positive effect on the Natural gas market.

The total estimated amount of Natural gas found of coast of Israel in the past couple of year is 25 TCF, and is estimated to provide more than the total consumption of Natural gas in Israel for the next 50 years. Thus, it is speculated that this recent finding will be more targeted as export to Europe.

The fight over this finding, however, has just begun as there is a committee that will decide how many royalties and taxes these drilling companies will have to pay for these Natural gas caches, which I have reviewed in the past.

The next step is to see if there will also be in this Leviatan drilling area crude oil.

Update on Prices

Here is an update on the prices of main energy commodities and precious metals for December 29th (all times GMT):

Precious Metal

Silver prices, continues its rally and are traded at 30.545 $/t oz. a 0.73% increase or 0.22 $/t oz. as of 19.33 PM.

Current Gold prices (short term February delivery future), much like Silver prices, are also rising and are  traded at 1,411 USD /t. oz., a moderate 0.43% increase or 6.1 USD /t. oz. at 19.32 PM.

Energy

Nymex Henry Hub Future (Natural Gas price) is traded at 4.21 USD/ MMBTU (one million BTU), an increase of 0.09 USD/ MMBTU, or 2.29%, as of 18.52 PM.

The Nymex crude oil price, short term futures (February 2011 delivery), on the New York Mercantile Exchange, is traded at 91.17 USD / barrel, a 0.32 USD/b decline or a 0.35% fall, as of 19.35 PM.

The Dated Brent spot crude oil is at 93.62 USD / barrel – a 0.19 USD/ barrel decrease as of 19.47 PM.

The WTI spot price is trading as of 17.47 PM GMT at 91.33 USD per barrel, a decrease of 0.17% compare to the end of last week.

For further reading: