Page 17 - MEOG Week 29 2021

MEOG NEWS IN BRIEF MEOG

rehabilitate the deteriorating infrastructure, “no factual foundation” and that a risk survey Reserve in southern Israel.
Zawati noted. found the threat of environmental damage to In its response to the petition, the EAPC
The second phase included the be “negligible.” said it had commissioned a risk survey, which
rehabilitation of the existing wells to increase In the petition, submitted in May, had shown that “severe damage leading to
their production rates. Tests were conducted three green organizations charged that the full loss of the entire content of a tanker or
to develop the production in two out of four Memorandum of Understanding signed by external damage to a tanker and significant
wells, the minister said. the EAPC with the United Arab Emirates in loss of content” would only occur once every
Zawati said that this is the first time Jordan October should be made null and void given 366,300 years.
has produced this amount of oil, which is that it was neither discussed nor approved by The likelihood of leakage in a pipe carrying
expected to provide the Treasury with some the government, nor opened for consultation fuel to a ship was determined to be so low it
$40 million annually. with experts and the public. would only occur once every 1,111 years, the
The minister pointed out that the The accord provides for the EAPC to company went on.
Kingdom’s daily consumption of oil reaches transfer crude oil and oil-related products “An insignificant spill,” which was not
about 140,000 barrels. The new production from its Red Sea terminal in Eilat to its quantified, was likely to take place once every
rate equals about 1.5 per cent of local terminal in Ashkelon on the southern 24 years. If such a spill happened, said the
consumption, according to the minister. Mediterranean coast via a land-based pipeline EAPC, the leak would be pooled and “no
JORDAN TIMES that connects the two. environmental damage or marine pollution
It is opposed by the former and current would be caused at all.”
EAPC defends UAE pipeline environmental protection ministers, the Israel the Jordanian port of Aqaba, adjacent to
To support its argument, it claimed that
Nature and Parks Authority, the local coastal
deal, says spill risk authorities, a forum of some 20 environmental Eilat, had received some 2,150 oil tankers
over the past decade with no reports of any
organizations, scores of scientists and Eilat
negligible residents. environmentally damaging spills.
The opposition is due in large part to the
The EAPC charged that opponents were
The state-owned Europe Asia Pipeline EAPC’s shoddy environmental record and determined to paint a distorted picture, with
Company on Monday dismissed concerns of numerous past leaks — it was responsible, the aim not only of stopping the deal, but of
opponents of its deal to pipe Gulf oil through seven years ago, for the largest environmental shutting down the company’s entire operation
Israel on the way to European markets, telling disaster in Israel’s history when one of its in Eilat, “a facility of strategic and geopolitical
the High Court that a petition filed by green pipelines ruptured, sending some 1.3 million importance to the State of Israel.”
groups to declare the agreement invalid had gallons of crude oil into the Evrona Nature TIMES OF ISRAEL

Week 29 21•July•2021 www. NEWSBASE .com P17