The Daunting Challenge Of Defending Israel’s Multi-Billion Dollar Gas Fields

Co-authored by Paul Alster

Israel is looking forward to a considerable energy windfall with the development of the Leviathan and Tamar natural gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean. These new resources should produce a revolution in Israel’s energy security, provide a new source of economic vitality, and turn the country into a significant energy exporter in the very near future. Physical security for these resources, however, remains a daunting challenge for a country that has historically given short shrift to its navy.

The rigs required to lift the gas from the sea floor are a target that some commentators have referred to as a “sitting duck” for terrorists. The gas platforms are to be situated outside of Israeli territorial waters, but inside Israel’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), an area roughly twice the size of Israel itself. Inside this zone any foreign vessel is legally allowed to approach within half a kilometre of Israeli infrastructure before defensive action can officially be taken.

IDF officials concede that they do not have the resources as of now to properly secure the infrastructure at sea. In particular, defense officials in Tel Aviv express concerns that terrorist groups might attempt to disrupt operations though suicide operations, with divers, depth charges, surface-to-surface missiles, or UAVs.

Rig owners, including Houston-based Noble Energy, are working intensively in conjunction with the IDF to ensure the security of their investment. There are private armed security forces on each platform that have radar to monitor sea traffic in the area. These radars are designed to link up with those operated by the IDF, measures that will be supplemented by increased naval patrols and UAV surveillance.

Navy officials have lobbied hard for a supplementary budget of $820 million, arguing that they required four new vessels, additional defense hardware, and more manpower, but recent budget constraints across the government left just $790 million USD in new funds for Israel’s entire military, only a fraction of which is earmarked for naval expenditures.

Even with capped funding levels, however, the Israeli navy has recently signed contracts to acquire two state-of-the-art German-built MEKO class F221 frigates bound for patrol of the Mediterranean gas fields, an apparent sign that their argument has won over most doubters. The two frigates will be armed with Israeli-built Barak 8 medium-range air defense systems alongside the 76mm guns and on-board surface-to-air missile systems and are a positive step in the right direction for Israel’s maritime security needs.

Yet how the battle to protect these rigs plays out depends at least in part upon a domestic Israeli battle over priorities, planning, and the ultimate value of the resources at play. Israeli naval officials claim that there is 1400 billion cubic metres (BCM) of natural gas in Israel’s new wells, amounting to $260 billion in assets that now need to be protected by the state.  They therefore claim that the navy’s latest budgetary request represents just 0.45% of projected revenues from the gas fields over the next twenty years.

However, according to the Tzemach Committee charged with reviewing Israel’s natural gas policy, 1400 BCM is actually a hypothetical estimate that includes not just proven, recoverable reserves, but also “prospective reserves” with “various probabilities of geological success”. Further, the Israeli government’s predicted share of this revenue through taxes and royalties is only about $60 billion, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a press conference this summer.

Even after accounting for a recent announcement by Tamar’s rig owners that they have discovered small additional amounts of natural gas, it seems likely that Israel’s navy has arguably inflated the (already considerable) value of natural gas at the site in order to procure the equipment and funding that they say is needed to defend Israel’s critical new energy infrastructure.

Regardless of how its intramural battle over spending and defense priorities plays out, Israel’s rivals in the region seem perfectly happy to invent new pretexts to threaten Israel’s nascent energy security. Turkey, Lebanon, and Hezbollah have all challenged Israel’s access to its rich new natural gas fields.

And according to Israeli intelligence officials, when Hezbollah sent a drone into Israeli territory in 2012, it actually did so by flying over one of Israel’s older natural gas rigs off the coast of Ashkelon. And that’s not even accounting for Hamas and Hezbollah’s widely recognized arsenals of sophisticated missiles, which pose an obvious danger to Israel’s newer Mediterranean rigs.

Many countries maintain a navy to protect their coastline and offshore assets from threats out at sea,but no other country has to account for the sorts of strategic threats that Israel faces to its promising energy windfall.

Paul Alster is an Israel-based journalist who can be followed at www.paulalster.com. David Andrew Weinberg is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.