The Abjac Mazal oil prospecting company announced that it has struck methane gas in “relatively large quantities” at a drilling site in northern Galilee.
Methane is viewed as a far cleaner energy source than the butane gas commonly used for cooking in Israel. Butane is a byproduct of petroleum.
Further testing is needed to establish the size of the deposit and its commercial viability at the site near Kibbutz Gonen in the Hula Valley.
Gonen 6 is one of eight wells drilled in the Hula Valley in the 1980s and then abandoned. Methane is a swamp gas; its only previous find took place in the Hula in the 1980s, but that reservoir suddenly dried up.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
