Unidentified gunmen in Yemen have carried out an attack and sabotaged a crude oil pipeline in southern Yemen’s oil-rich province of Shabwa, a government official said on Monday according to the Media Line. The gunmen used explosives to bomb the main crude pipeline near the Jannah Hunt oil field on Sunday night, which has caused significant damage and resulted in a substantial crude oil spill, said the official anonymously.

The motives behind the attack remain unclear as the gunmen’s identities are yet to be unveiled, the news outlet reported.

The oil pipeline which connects the Jannah Hunt oil field with the crude oil storage facilities in Alam, Jardan district of Yemen, is now inoperative, posing a challenge to the region’s oil distribution network. Security forces and an engineering team were sent to repair the damage, but the gunmen caused an armed confrontation in the oil fields.  The Giants Brigades, a militia loyal to the Southern Transitional Council, intervened. These forces have been governing Shabwa since early 2022.

According to the Media Line, Yemen’s oil infrastructure has been vulnerable to repeated attacks by various armed groups, often motivated by service demands or as a means to exert pressure on local authorities for various reasons, including the release of prisoners.

Yemen’s history with oil

Yemen’s history with oil is marked by both promise and challenges, with the sector playing a significant role in the country’s economy and geopolitical landscape over the last 40 years. Yemen discovered its first commercially viable oil reserves in the late 1980s, particularly in the Marib region. This discovery led to increased foreign interest and investment in the Yemeni oil industry.

During the 1990s, Yemen faced economic difficulties exacerbated by declining oil prices and increasing production costs. The government sought to attract foreign investment and expertise to boost the oil sector. However, political instability and security concerns hindered consistent development. In the early 2000s, Yemen’s oil production reached its peak.

The Yemeni government signed various production-sharing agreements with international oil companies to explore and exploit oil reserves. However, the country’s political instability, tribal conflicts, and the rise of insurgent groups like Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) posed serious challenges to oil production and infrastructure. Attacks on pipelines and other facilities disrupted operations and led to periodic declines in oil output.

The Houthi insurgency, which gained momentum in the late 2000s and escalated into a full-scale civil war in 2014, further complicated Yemen’s oil industry. The conflict resulted in the division of the country, with the Houthi-controlled north and the internationally recognized government in the south. This division disrupted oil production and exports, significantly impacting the economy.

International interventions and peace negotiations attempted to bring stability to Yemen, but the situation remained precarious. The country continues to face economic challenges, hunger, and water shortages, and the oil sector remains vulnerable to the complex political and security dynamics that have characterized Yemen’s recent history.

More on Yemen:

Make honey the Yemen way

Make zhug the Yemen way

Portraits of the world’s oldest trees

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The world is up in arms about the new frontier in mining – deep sea mining for minerals like lithium and gold from virgin seafloors around the world. Prospectors say that the growth of electric cars has left us no choice as the batteries need lithium and other rare metals to function. But mining for oil at sea has been ongoing for decades. Offshore drilling began in America in the 1880s and the damage of oil exploration at sea is only too well known after great oil spills.

Now a Brazilian petrochemical company called Petrobras wants to drill exploratory oil wells in the ocean near the mouth of the Amazon. Scientists worry if the plan gets approved, inevitable oil leaks could damage nearby ecosystems, including a vast reef system and the second-largest mangrove forest in the world. Little is known about the reef, so “a comprehensive evaluation of the risks from oil and gas exploitation is currently impossible”, says marine ecologist Rodrigo de Moura in a new Nature article.

His colleague concurs: “There’s a palpable risk of an oil spill if activities proceed — the fact it is an exploratory well for studying the region’s potential for deep-sea oil doesn’t exempt it from accidents,” says Carlos Rezende, a marine biologist at the State University of Northern Rio de Janeiro in Campos dos Goytacazes, Brazil.

In defense, Petrobras said it will not be endangering delicate ecosystems, “there is no record of any nearby conservation units, nor is it located near rivers, lakes, floodplains or reef systems” they wrote, but the scientists familiar with the region know that the Great Amazon Reef System is only about 40 miles away and any oil spill or leakage will easily travel that distance.

Studies suggest that the reef that the reef somewhere between 9,500 and 56,000 square kilometers across the mouth of the Amazon River. When it was first described by scientists in the 1970s, the researchers then did not observe any impressive range of biodiversity. But recent studies found an ecosystem with corals, sponges and fish.

“It is huge, and it is sensitive,” says Ronaldo Francini-Filho, a marine ecosystems researcher at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. “And we don’t know even 5% of what’s down there.”

Brazil has other megaprojects in the Amazon region that are under debate including the repaving of a highway that would pass through a preserved rainforest, the construction of a major railway for grain transport and the renewal of a giant hydroelectric dam’s license. Countries in South America were easy to exploit in the past but with environmental awakening and the understanding of a country’s need to protect their assets, citizens are expecting more from their leaders who will need to make tough decisions.

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Kuwait enjoys a strategic location in the Arabian Gulf with a coastline spanning about 200 miles if you include the islands dotted along the region. Like Dubai it also has a series of artificial islands with some of them bringing new bird species to the region. However, this beautiful coastline like many others is a victim of marine pollution. 

Marine Pollution in Kuwait

Despite the efforts of the Kuwaiti government to protect Kuwait’s marine environment, there are several issues we need to tackle when it comes to marine pollution in Kuwait:

Declining Fish Stocks 

There has been an apparent decline in marine life in Kuwait waters over the last few years. Coral reefs, marine turtles, and vulnerable fish such as shrimp, silver pomfret, suboor, hamoor, and frush are some of the most affected animal species.  

Marine Pollutants in Kuwait

Most research conducted on marine pollution in Kuwait reveals a number of marine pollutant sources:

Sewage discharge

This is the biggest source of pollution for the Kuwaiti Ocean. Traces of oil, petroleum, hydrocarbons, trace metals, residual chlorine, and other suspended particles have been found in the ocean. The most probable cause for these is oil and petrochemical industry, power plants, and other sewage dumping activities. 

Oil spills

With the Arabian Gulf being a major shipping point for oil transportation, oil spills are unavoidable. It is estimated that around 2 million barrels of oil are spilled in the Arabian Gulf annually as a result of tank washing and dirty ballast waters. And there is more spillage from military operations and oil production operations. 

Ship waste dumping

Ships often dump their chemical and vessel waste in the ocean. This includes domestic waste, sewage waste, oil, and even fishing gear.

Dredging

Due to land reclamation, the Kuwaiti waters are also a victim of dredging. This destroys fish spawning grounds and makes the river banks unstable. 

Fresh water shortage

The ocean along the coast of Kuwait is extremely salty. This is because fresh water from the Shat Al-Arab and Karon River is restricted due to the water dams along these rivers. 

What Can We Do To Protect Kuwait’s Ocean?

When we hear that our ocean is in trouble, it’s easy to feel powerless. While most of the action rests at the hands of businesses and government, there’s still a lot we can do to help save our ocean: 

Check The Label

When buying anything, opt for sustainable businesses. These businesses are making a conscious effort at helping our environment by taking steps to reduce their carbon imprint. 

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. 

You can help decrease the effects of climate change by reducing your own carbon footprint. This can be done by reducing energy use. Turn off the lights when not in use. Unplug electronics and opt for walking and riding a bike. 

Minimize Plastic Use

Cut down on your plastic usage, especially single-use plastics. These plastics usually end up in the ocean which severely impacts our marine life and adds to marine pollution in Kuwait. 

Eat Sustainable Seafood 

When buying seafood, look for eco-certification. If you don’t find one, ask your retailer about the source of your seafood. Demand eco-certified seafood from your retailer and favorite restaurant. This guide on sustainable fish in the region might help –> 7 Gulf fish probably okay to eat.

Be Ocean Aware 

Educate yourself and others. You can do this by watching documentaries, signing up with Ocean Awareness companies, and discussing the impact of marine pollution on the world.

Sign up and Help 

Become an advocate of the ocean. Sign up with NGOs like I AM Ocean Minded, the first-of-its-kind NGO in Kuwait aiming to improve the ocean mindset by creating an ocean-minded community. They conduct beach cleanups, awareness campaigns, and other communal activities to make a difference. 

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EU Ambassador to Israel Emanuele Giaufret was joined Friday morning by more than two dozen envoys from EU member states, including 10 ambassadors, at a large-scale beach clean-up operation at the Beit Yanai National Park near Netanya, Israel. 

A suspicious and deadly bitumen oil spill appeared washing up on the Israeli and Lebanese coast a few weeks ago. Iran is suspected of eco-terrorism and purposefully dumping the oil, meanwhile the public has rallied to pull globs of tar from the seashore. You can read our first report of of the Israeli oil spill here. 

And the UN banking sector has just released a guide on how bankers can invest in the ocean. Timely.

Sea turtles are being remediated with mayonnaise treats that melts the oil in their stomachs and gives them nutrients and meanwhile the ambassadors from EU countries pitched in among the more than 12,000 people who have been cleaning the seashore by hand. They only worked for an hour and a photo op, but it lends support in an oil spill that could escalate if Iran is indeed found the culprit of eco terrorism.

Clad in blue EU t-shirts and wearing plastic bags on their shoes, the EU diplomats to Israel spent more than an hour removing tar from stones along the coastline.

They were greeted at the beach by Galit Shaul, the head of the Emek Hefer Regional Council. The EU delegation in Tel Aviv initiated the activity, conducted in cooperation with the Zalul environmental organization, which it supports financially, after learning about the massive contamination of Israel’s beaches following a huge oil spill.

“As soon as we saw the terrible images of black tar washed up on beaches along the coastline, we decided that we had to do something to help. Every summer our delegation organizes a massive beach cleanup, but this disaster calls for immediate action,” Ambassador Giaufret said.

“There’s still a lot of work to do, but every effort helps. We’re grateful to our partners from Zalul for the important work they’re doing.”

Youval Arbel, sea campaigns manager at Zalul, said: “The massive tar contamination in our beaches is one of the most severe ecological disasters we have ever seen. Hundreds of volunteers are working every day to remove the tar from the rocks before its toxic materials will be swept into the sea and hurt more animals.

Zalul has been working with the NGO EcoOcean among others to clean the oil. EcoOcean’s founder Andreas Weil had the foresight two years ago to start training the public on how to be prepared for an emergency cleanup. His Swedish background might come into play in his NGOs success, he told Green Prophet.

Protecting the environment is one of the EU’s top priorities. The EU puts a strong emphasis in its activities around the world, including in Israel, on preserving and cleaning beaches from waste, and the severe incident that has contaminated Israel’s beaches in recent days is another, especially painful, reminder of the importance of these efforts.

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An oil tanker from Greece called the Minerva Helen is suspected of dumping its bilge and catastrophic amounts of tar and oil into the Mediterranean Sea. A current ban from Mediterranean seafood and fish is in effect as the public and soldiers pictured above scrambles to clean up the tar. We reached out. The company denies any link.

Update March 2, 2021: The Israel Government sends a team to Greece and exonerates the Greek ship. They now accuse Iran of eco-terrorism. 

Give Israelis an emergency and you will see what kind of stuff they are made of. The recent crisis is a large oil spill which is currently washing mounds of goopy tar-like bitumen onto every inch of beach along Israel’s 170-mile coastline of the Mediterranean Sea. 

The bitumen also known as dilbit can have some suspected links to rare cancers, and is more dangerous than regular oil (read InsideClimateNews here) and is suspected to be from the bilge of an oil tanker passing through the Mediterranean Sea, about 31 miles off the coast of Israel. The source of the tanker is unknown, but those close to the heart of the matter suspect it was poor weather and just a tanker in trouble that caused the release. Local media are blaming a tanker called Minerva Helen, which flies under the flag of Greece. The name was revealed yesterday after a gag order lifted. We spoke with the company and they deny any link. 

The feeling on the ground in Israel is not who or which country is to blame, but what kind of system can we have in place for the future. Because as long as there are tankers and pipelines and us using oil, spills are bound to happen. One tanker off the coast of Yemen is a floating time bomb. 

The horrendous photos of dead turtles and a rotting baby whale with its  belly full of tar dead ashore an Israeli beach has impacted the public to spring into action –– some 10,000 people have turned up to help pull the beached globs of oil out of corals, rock faces and sand. This was orchestrated through an NGO called EcoOcean which already had a plan of action set up two years ago. The organization has not only helped citizens see how they can make an effort to clean up the problem, but it has set an example to the Israeli government on how to future proof against environmental disasters. 

Typically Israel’s Ministries act in response to demonstrations and lobbyists’ concerns du jour. They act when faced with a crisis but they don’t like anyone telling them what to do. 

So when Andreas Weil, a then new immigrant to Israel from Sweden wanted to change how Mediterranean marine education and health was managed by Israel, he didn’t whine or point fingers. He made a plan, raised money, built a research ship and an educational system, and started teaching the Israeli colleges, non-profits, government groups and society how to cooperate to protect the sea. That was 15 years ago, and the NGO is called EcoOcean. Among its flagship projects is the Blue Flag Program to clean Israeli beaches, in better times from cigarette butts, and municipal runoff. 

In worse times EcoOcean was ready, Weil tells Green Prophet. Two years ago he approached the Ministry of the Environment and asked if he could set up a coordinated beach cleanup system, for emergency purposes. At the time there was nothing in place. He said he would build a pilot. If EcoOcean could use some of their resources, then a system could be up and running well within 3 years, with volunteers trained and equipment set up. At that point he’d convince the government to find money and run it. 

EcoOcean raised almost $1 million USD and set up the emergency beach response plan which was mobilized right away: “This week more than 10,000 people were helping, some of them running around in dangerous amounts of tar,” says Weil. “We did all this to push the Environment Ministry to take responsibility for what it needs to do. I hope this accident will make it happen. There is no way they can retract now and say they don’t need a plan like this.”

Unlike other hopeful activists that try and change the Israeli attitude to a “green” one, Weil, as an outsider from Sweden, with a no-nonsense socialist mentality just wanted to “get the money for it and show the government how it can be done.”

“It’s definitely a Swedish thing,” he says. “I guess there is a reason why we are giving out the Nobel Peace Prize,” says Weil, who over the years of knowing him, I can also say it’s also an Andreas thing. He’s consistently persisted and built and encouraged others to be part of the dream of saving the sea, usually putting everyone else from the organization in the spotlight instead of himself. Organizations like the Cousteau Foundation have reached out to cooperate with him. 

“This is what I learned from living in Israel,” says Weil. “I saw how they were working. They were spending money on an agenda, demonstrating. And I thought, how can we do it differently? Israelis listen to common sense. They don’t want to hear you telling them to pick up plastic from the street.”

Weil’s foresight rang true. 

And from their homes the people came to clean up the sea. Organizing on parents’ Whatsapp groups, Facebook groups that promote parties: everyone was turning out to be part of the cleanup. 

Clumps of tar larger than footballs were rolling up onto shore and volunteers mobilized to move it from reefs and rocks into plastic bags for disposal. One of them was Ariel Mielnik, 32, a clinical psychologist from Jaffa. He found some like-minded people on a Whatsapp group, The Friends of Jaffa, to clean up beaches in the Tel Aviv area: “We arrived and the staff gave us all kinds of protective equipment and gave us a fast brief on what to do,” he tells Green Prophet. 

“We blasted electronic music throughout the beach, having a good time while cleaning up as much as we could and for as long as we had free time,” he says. “It was heartwarming to see so many volunteers. Runners would clap for us and shout ‘kol hakavod [good for you]’ which was nice.

“I imagined black pools of tar and tar stuck to everything. The good news, when we approached we couldn’t even see it. Now the very bad news is the tar has spread to small pieces of around 4 mm, which makes it super difficult to pick up bit by bit. Only us humans can do this as far as I know,  and the job feels impossible to complete.”

Fashion photographer and videographer Doron Barsky, also from Jaffa, headed further north and was shocked by the blobs of tar as far as the eye could see. He was at a beach in the northern part of the country called Nasholim, helping fill bags with tar and hardened oil rocks.

He shows the oil in his hands in the video below.  

A gag order kept the identity of the ship unknown, until Wednesday at 4 PM where it was released to the mainstream media that the suspect ship is the Minerva Helen, the same Greek ship involved in major oil spill near Copenhagen in 2008. The gag order was put in place so those running the oil tanker would not destroy evidence. 

The Minerva Helen left Port Said, Egypt on February 11 en route to Israel and denies any connection to the oil spill. It also denied its involvement in the Danish oil spill. 

The vessel (IMO: 9276561, MMSI 240147000) is a Crude Oil Tanker built in 2004, 17 years old. You can track the Minerva Helen online and environmentalists might consider meeting it as it reaches its next port Piraeus, Greece, on February 27. It is owned by Minerva Marine, from Athens, Greece. A statement from the company denies any connection to the spill. 

They announce to the media, “On the 15th of February 2021 the vessel sailed directly to Cartagena Spain. During the period that the vessel was drifting offshore Port Said awaiting her next employment, the vessel was not involved in any operation nor in any other activity that could be connected to an oil discharge at sea.

“The vessel is classed with the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS). Minerva Helen is well maintained without any structural or other defects that could cause an oil pollution incident.

 “It should be noted that on the 22nd of February 2021 the vessel was inspected by the Spanish Port State Control Authorities in Cartagena and was determined to be without any deficiencies or observations, and confirmed that the vessel was in a satisfactory maintenance and operational condition without any defect.”

Jonathan Spencer, a crisis response manager representing the company tells Green Prophet: “There are no formal allegations regarding Minerva Helen, despite speculation having continued in some media outlets. For your reference, I have also attached an article published by one of the shipping industries leading data and intelligence companies which further demonstrates that Minerva Helen could not have been involved (The link to a PDF is here).”

Spencer adds, “Other vessels are clearly shown to be in the area in the Lloyds List piece (links to PDF)), and clearly such vessels will be of interest for any subsequent inquiries that continue. This of course remains a matter for the Israeli authorities.”  

____

Characteristically for Lebanon, also seeing its share of tar on the shores, blamed the dump on Israel; its Prime Minister Hassan Diab declaring “a ship of the Israeli enemy” was to blame for the oil spill that has reached Lebanon’s southern Mediterranean shores. His knee-jerk response to the spill was much different than Israel’s which called for a ban on visiting the beach, eating fish and which mobilized thousands to clean up the mess. 

Greenpeace Med responded to the lack of action of Diab’s government, still in shambles after the catastrophic explosion last year that ripped Beirut apart. And the whole political cabinet quit. Officially Diab quit as well but is serving as interim PM until a new election can bring about a capable leader for the troubled country. 

Greenpeace sent us this message to share about the lack of non-action by Lebanon’s leadership, hardly functioning in the good days: “We call for immediate action from the Ministry of Environment to assess the severity of this spill via an urgent survey and monitoring programme and to put in place a plan to minimize the impacts on the environment and public health.

“Based on the assessment results, the authorities should provide safety guidance to the Lebanese people especially with regards to fishing and swimming activities. This incident adds up to the long list of spills that have been threatening the rich marine biodiversity and impacting the populations of the Eastern Mediterranean region and is yet another facet of the destructive nature of our global systems’ addiction to fossil fuels.”

Future-proofing with this marine biologist who is taking inventory

We spoke with marine biologist Philip Nemoy, a post-doc researcher at the  Israel Oceanographic & Limnological Research before the gag order was lifted and he said that he had not yet heard from what country the oil spill tanker originated before the gag order was lifted. He didn’t think pointing blame was the right response to a catastrophe. 

According to Nemoy there are tight regulations in place at sea and accidents are bound to happen as long as ships carry oil, and as long as oil rigs carry it in pipes undersea. And this all will continue as long as our hunger for oil persists. 

The amount of the oil spill on Israel’s shores does not equal the Exxon Valdez, the Gulf War oil spill, or the Deepwater Horizon he says, but it has made the public and government ask itself some important questions: Who is responsible for this kind of marine disaster when it strikes? 

“The threat is there and it is not going to disappear in the nearest future because we need oil transported from oil rigs in one way or another and these are prone to disaster despite all the measures and precautions taken. All those dealing with oil at sea have a lot of regulations. And they have a lot to do to avoid any spill,” Nemoy tells Green Prophet. 

“I think the last spill was due to a major storm and something went bad to the ship at sea during the storm and it can happen to any ship from any country. Sometimes nature is stronger than us. We need to ask ourselves what do we need to do when we see it happening? We need to cooperate when an oil spill happens. 

“The spill is a warning light for our society. That it is not only the government and not only the people and not only the NGOs. We are all connected together. What I can see is that the connection and the dialogue is lacking. It should be developed at good times and not in the time of troubles.”

He credited EcoOcean for the first response and noticed that the israeli society is deeply disconnected from its parts, yet he also acknowledges how “quickly we can become connected today. I see how things happened in the timeline of hours and days. Just in Haifa, hundreds had come together very quickly.”

Generally, Nemoy explains, the Middle East is a “balagan” or mess –- with a lot of hand waving and shouting. From the Former USSR, he saw this a bit during the cleanup but he also saw that even more could be done if more preparations were done in advance with deeper cooperation between the NGOs and Government groups, like there is in times of war. 

“This way we can inform people what we can do. The same way we’d inform people when there is a war or earthquake. There can be a list of simple things you can do to help, or what you can do so you won’t harm yourself. Some people who went to the oil spill might have harmed themselves if they inhaled the fumes or touched the tar.”

Nemoy worked for the Environment Ministry at one point and understood that most companies don’t want to pollute the environment: “They want to carry on their business. If they did pollute it was because they did not know or did not want to know. It does not take a huge amount of money to explain to people about the consequences if they do pollute.”

In the past Nemoy worked to understand how he could commercially cultivate sponges in aquaculture effluent of fish farms at sea. “Which was difficult.”

Currently he is building a nationwide database, crowdsourced, to quantify marine life with environmental and commercial usefulness. Had the database been already ready, he’d have been able to tell organizations like EcoOcean where to focus efforts. 

With his eyes wide open he has yet to hear of any cleanup efforts from nearby Gaza, Egypt or Lebanon to the North. “I’ve heard nothing. Nothing in Gaza. Nothing in Lebanon. Maybe it’s my bubble – I know nothing about what happens north of Rosh Hanikra and nothing from Ashkelon to the South. I would be more than happy to take a bus of 100 other volunteers and coordinate clean up efforts outside of Israel,” he says. If you’d like to cooperate with him reach out via email philip.nemoy@gmail.com.

National Geographic Explorer and Marine Geo-archaeologist Beverly Goodman, works on the bay at Haifa University. She tells Green Prophet: “It’s really disheartening: none of the plans made were applied- the NGOs and local districts were left to mostly left to handle it. Apparently the spill was recognized even before the storm and models were run predicting this outcome- yet no response until it hit the beaches,” she tells Green Prophet.

Authorities have since banned the sale of all Mediterranean seafood and fish which will put a strain on local fisherman, and locals who line up for fish before holidays and the Friday night meal. Ramadan is coming soon, in April, and no one knows when it might be possible to eat local fish again.

A matter of faith?

Eco-Rabbi Yonatan Neril, who has written an ecology-inspired Eco-Bible, has to admit that “we are deeply embedded in an oil-based lifestyle” and for that “we are both victims and perpetrators of oil spills. But at this time of empowered living, we can claim our power and actively steer our collective destiny away from the profit motives of politicians and companies,” he tells Green Prophet. 

Comparing the autopsy of the beached whale from last week, with its body full of oil, to our spiritual position at present, Neril provides an analogy, and a solution which is within reach of all of our nets: 

“Each of us is Jonah inside the whale, whose belly and lungs have had enough of petroleum. We do not need to wait until someone rescues us—or until we run out of fossil fuels—since God is both warning and empowering us now to take steps as individuals, communities, and nations to liberate ourselves of this addiction and live fossil free,” says Neril. 

“Faith leaders and communities can join together to promote a swift transition to renewable energy and toward reducing our use of energy,” he concludes. 

Read more about EcoOcean:

EcoOcean’s Director Andreas Weil Goes Swimming With the Whales in Tonga

EcoOcean Opening a New Marine Research and Education Center This Week

Environment Educator EcoOcean Shows NGOs How to Create Advertising: Campaign Save the Turtles

Red more about oil disasters:

Secret Oil Pipeline Between Israel and the UAE

Yemen’s ticking time bomb oil tanker held by rebels

Israel oil spill ruins desert and rivers

Lebanese tells Iraq to keep their stinky oil

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The United Arab Emirates (UAE, or the Emirates) and Israel signed an historic peace deal last month. For decades Muslim nations have boycotted and snubbed Israel in trade and tourism. It was so bad in the 70s with an oil embargo that Israel had only a handful of allies to help them buy energy. The strain caused Israel to develop in new ways, in solar energy and natural gas exploration. 

A new deal in the wake of a blooming love story between Israel and the Emirates has led to a landmark oil deal between Israel and the Emriates. In the deal, Emirate crude oil will be transported through the Indian Ocean and Red Sea by tanker, then shipped by pipeline through existing pipelines in Israel. 

From there the oil will be shipped to Europe and other nearby locations, hopefully avoiding the Taliban and the Houthis in Yemen along the way, because piracy is still an issue. Read about the sinking oil tanker off the coast of Yemen which could cause an oil spill 5 times the size of the Exxon Valdez. 

The new deal will be managed through a company called the Red-Med Land Bridge based in the Emirates and it is actually a joint venture between several companies:  Petromal, the oil and gas arm of Abu Dhabi’s National Holding and AF Entrepreneurship, an Israeli company.

The Red Med Land Bridge will work with Israel’s Europe-Asia Pipeline Co. (EAPC) to transport Emirati oil through Israel starting at its Red Sea port up to Haifa, which is an important energy transport hub to Israel and the rest of Europe. 

In the deal,  the Red Med Land Bridge will transport oil from the Gulf state and Eastern markets to the West via pipelines linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, as part of new commercial agreements between the two countries.

The agreement “offers oil producers and refiners the shortest most efficient and cost-effective route to transport oil and oil products from the Arabian Gulf to the consumption centers in the West, and provides access for consumers in the Far East to oil produced in the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions,” EAPC offered in a statement.

Storing and processing crude oil in Israel?

The Emirates is one of OPEC‘s third-largest oil producers and they struck a peace deal with Israel in Washington on Sept. 15, 2020. The prime minister of the Emirates arrived in Israel on Oct. 20 to consolidate trade deals and tourism, which will include visa-free entry to both countries.

A high level Emirati delegation arrived in Israel on Oct. 20 to sign commercial agreements in agriculture, tourism energy projects that hopefully also include renewable energy. Critics say that at 30% renewables Israel has set a low bar.

The world is still addicted to oil, well we depend on it, but we can bank on the progressive Emirates to lead the way in renewable energy, with Israel as an innovation partner. Israel still only produces a small amount of its energy needs using solar energy, about 5% of its energy needs, but its intentions are there to increase this number.

Some challenges in Israel: Just recently a large wind farm project slated to be built on a UNESCO bioreserve was axed. They said the noise pollution and damage to birds would be too great. Nature lovers and activists are well educated in Israel and it will be interesting to see how they react to an oil pipeline deal, given oil spills do happen in Israel. There was one at the end of October out of Ashkelon, some 2 miles out at sea.  Beachgoers in Tel Aviv got their feet covered in sticky tar.

Israel has oil spills in nature reserves to deal with. And an oil spill in the Red Sea port Gulf of Eilat almost destroyed the dying coral reef. 

The environment minister Dov Henan had said about the oil spill in Eilat: “During the deliberations of the subcommittee on oil dangers in the Gulf of Eilat, we discovered an alarming picture of neglect and an inability to cope. Unless the laws are changed to better regulate the petroleum industry an oil disaster in Israel is only a matter of time.”

The oil pipeline plan and potential for Israel

The Israeli pipeline company EAPC already has about 200 miles of bi-directional oil pipelines installed with a capacity to carry 30 million mt of crude/year from Eilat to Ashkelon.  

Israel consumes 10.5 million mt/year of oil, according to its energy ministry. Meanwhile the Emirates with a production capacity of 4 million b/d, sells most of its oil to Asia, according to S&P. The country sells mainly refined oil products over to Europe, and these are transported via tankers that travel up the Red Sea through to the Suez Canal and then onto Europe through the Mediterranean. 

Reviving a lost oil dream with Iran

The Israeli pipeline was built in a joint venture with Iran in 1968, but after the Islamic Revolution in 1979 Israel lost its energy partner. The company changed its name from the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Co. to EAPC last year in 2019. 

The EAPC will help Gulf oil companies bypass the Suez Canal, the manmade canal built by Egypt in the 1960s to link the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, expanding trade from the east to the west. This canal also allowed damaging invasive species like these jellyfish to proliferate.

We can assume that since Israel has struck a deal with Chevron in natural gas that the EAPC may be able to provide infrastructure services in those areas to Europe.

The EAPC route through Israel is a good alternative to the Suez Canal in that the Suez it is limited by tanker size, and the pipeline that exists in Egypt, the SUMED, only carries oil products in one direction from the Red Sea to Sidi Kerir on the Mediterranean Coast. Sending a tanker to ship oil around the Cape of Good Hope is more expensive and slower. 

Israel is also proposing an oil pipeline deal with Saudi Arabia. Every OPEC  nation is looking to shorten its distance to market and Israel is a good shortcut to take. Especially given its experience in security.

Want to take action in cleaning up the sea? The UN has a new investment guide for bankers. We learned that banks are supporting the burning of the Amazon, whether or not investors at the bank are aware. Be one step ahead and invest in the sea, with this handy toolkit and guide you can download here. 

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The FSO Safer from above. It looks peaceful but it’s a floating time bomb and when it explodes or leaks could be worse than the Exxon Valdez. It is locked inside a conflict zone. Yemen needs international help. Image via Conflict and Environment Observatory 

After witnessing neglect and the dire humanitarian crisis after the explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, Greenpeace and Green Prophet is urging the United Nations to help Yemen as an abandoned oil tanker there threatens to explode or dump more than a million barrels of oil into the pristine Red Sea.

Water recently entered the tanker’s engine room, now increasing the risk several-fold that the vessel would explode or sink. A temporary fix was found, but the United Stations said it could have led to disaster.

The one-time supertanker, built in Japan in 1974, sprung a leak in late May, the UN reports, flooding its engine room with seawater and threatening to destabilize the vessel and spill its cargo.

For now, the international community must come up with a response plan should an oil spill occur. The Safer could release four times more oil than the notorious Exxon Valdez disaster did, off Alaska in 1989.

Neither war-torn Yemen nor its neighbours have the capacity to manage and mitigate the consequences of such a huge spill – and private salvage operators will be reluctant to take on a job inside a conflict zone, the UN has said.

The Yemeni government has asked the United Nations Security Council for more help to prevent the FSO Safer – moored 5 miles off the Yemini coast since 1988 and abandoned in the Red Sea – from ruining the entire Red Sea.

What conflict wins

The ship was taken over by the Houthi militias in March 2015, when they took control of the coast around the port area of Hodeidah. The Houthi movement officially called Ansar Allah and colloquially simply Houthis, is an Islamic political and armed movement that emerged from Sa’dah in northern Yemen in the 1990s.

They are not allowing international groups to move the tanker.

“The growing risk that the Safer oil tanker could rupture or explode causing an environmental, economic and humanitarian catastrophe for Yemen and its neighbours,” the UN Security Council has admitted.

They called on the Houthis to “immediately grant unconditional access for United Nations technical experts to assess the tanker’s condition, conduct any possible urgent repairs, and make recommendations for the safe extraction of the oil”.

There are parallels here with Lebanon and the Hezbollah who are the likely owners of the thousand of tonnes of fertilizers that exploded last week in Beirut.

(Read: Hezbollah flaunts its support for the Houthis)

According to HolmAkhdar, CSO-Yemen add the EPA of Yemen, some 115 Yemeni islands will lose their biodiversity if the tanker were to dump its oil. More than 120,000 fisherman will be out of work, almost 1000 fish will be endangered, and some 300 species of coral reef will die.

The environmental group Holm Akhdar warned in June: “Yemen would need a long period of time to tackle the fallouts of marine pollution. The Red Sea ecology would need over 30 years to recover from the ensuing dire consequences of the oil spillage.”

Yemeni Foreign Minister Mohamed al Hadhrami has said that a leak on this ship could lead to “one of the biggest environmental disasters in the region and the world”.

A director at the government oil company in Hodeidah, said the FSO Safer “would be more destructive to the environment than the damage caused by the Exxon Valdez oil tanker in Alaska in 1989. An imminent environmental disaster awaits the Red Sea countries if the Safer oil tanker is destroyed,” he said.

Greenpeace MENA Executive Director Zeina Alhajj wrote to Green Prophet and said:

“Time has run out on doing nothing to avert the looming social and ecological disaster that is the FSO Safer  oil tanker. Inaction is no longer an option. The UN is our last, best hope of averting a catastrophic oil spill in the Red Sea. It has all the influence and expertise to solve the problem and Greenpeace urge the Secretary-General to make repairing the tanker and removing the million barrels of oil on board a priority.

“Unless the UN act we risk sleepwalking into a disaster of international significance that will heap even more misery and suffering on millions of Yemenis.”

Meanwhile, the Houthis and then the Saudis are doing terrible things to Ethiopian migrants in Yemen. Read this Human Rights watch report.

Want to take action in cleaning up the sea? The UN has a new investment guide for bankers. We learned that banks are supporting the burning of the Amazon, whether or not investors at the bank are aware. Be one step ahead and invest in the sea, with this handy toolkit and guide you can download here.

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Anaerobic digestion is the action of bacteria breaking down organic matter without oxygen. Biogas, mainly made up of methane, is formed as bacteria acts upon the organic matter such as manure.  Elements that do not contain methane are removed for methane to be utilised as a source of energy.

There are certain types of organic matter that is more difficult to break down than others. Organic matter that easily breaks down produces more biogas than that which is difficult to digest.

Codigestion happens when you use anaerobic digestion to break down many kinds of organic matter in a single anaerobic digester.  The following are among organic wastes that MBP Solutions uses with manure in codigestion:

• Used fats, oil and grease
• Restaurant food waste
• Energy crops
• Food processing wastes
• Food processing by-products
• Crop remains

Codigestion boosts the production of biogas from organic waste that is difficult to break down.

Collecting Organic Waste

Organic waste must be collected in a system that ensures all debris is removed. It is likely to contain particles such as stones, straw or sand. These particles can stop up the digester’s pipes and interfere with operation.

Production of biogas is possible in farms that collect manure in the following forms:

• Liquid
• Slurry
• Semi-solid

In addition, the manure should be collected:

• At a central point such as a pit, pond or tank
• Every day or every few days
• Every day or every other day

Elements that could be injurious to the anaerobic bacteria action are not added. Such elements include the following:

• Feed additives that contain antibiotics
• Compounds used for cleaning and maintaining equipment

Cleaning compounds may contain harmful ingredients such as halogens, acids as well as detergents.

The use of these materials has not been declared problematic. Nevertheless, maximum quantities have not been established. Therefore, one must be careful not to use them in large quantities in the organic waste.

Handling Manure

If you have a large farm, then you have a large amount of manure on a daily basis. Most times you struggle to dispose of it. Creating biogas gives a solution even as it provides you with your own source of power.

Manure is treated before it is fed into a digester for the adjustment of the total solid components. This usually includes adding separating solids, water followed by mixing or heating.

Designs of Anaerobic Digesters 

Plug Flow

Plug flow systems are best suited for dairy operations. These ones collect manure by scraping. The preferred ones are mixed plug flow systems because they are built to support a wider range of solid concentrations.

Covered Lagoon

The methane is recovered and then fed via a pipe to the combustion device from a lagoon that contains an adjustable cover. Some systems utilize a single cell for both digestion and storage.

Complete Mix

These digesters are created with a tank that is enclosed and heated with a mechanical hydraulic /gas-mixing system. They can also be used in dairy operations. This is because they work best with considerable dilution in the manure such as the wastewater from a milking centre.

Additional Designs

Other typical designs include:

Batch Digester:  in this one, manure is introduced into the reactor at the start of the process in a batch. The reactor stays closed for the length of the process.

Induced Blanket Reactors: A blanket of sludge develops retaining the anaerobic bacteria. This creates an environment that is rich in bacteria. The feedstock must pass through this environment.

Fixed film digesters: These ones come with plastic media such as pellets. Bactria attaches to the media and grows. They do not rely only on suspended bacteria in order to break down the digester feedstock.

Conclusion

Anaerobic digestion ensures the formation of biogas which forms as bacteria works on the organic matter. This then gives you an alternative source of clean energy as well as fuel.

The post How Anaerobic Digestion Works appeared first on Green Prophet.

When containing a massive disaster like an oil spill, small microbes play a big role.

Arezoo Ardekani, a Purdue University associate professor of mechanical engineering, has published research that describes the complex hydrodynamics of microorganisms at liquid-liquid and gas-liquid interfaces, showing that microbes may flock to areas where surfactant has been applied. This is important news for the western east oil producing nations, as many oil spills threaten the Red Sea, Indian ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Bacteria are known to break down oil from oil spills but if we know how the system works we can speed it up and localize the process, when needed. Here’s how.

On April 20, 2010, a catastrophic explosion aboard the Louisiana oil rig Deepwater Horizon caused an underwater wellhead to rupture, discharging oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It took 87 days to cap the underwater well, by which point more than 200 million gallons of oil had discharged into the gulf. Officials used many different tactics to contain the damage of the oil spill, such as relying on microbes to digest hydrocarbons, and using dispersant (or surfactant) chemicals to break up oil slicks, making it easier for the microbes to digest.

“Microbes were the ‘first responders’ to the oil spill,” Ardekani said.  “They remediated a significant amount of hydrocarbons. But the Gulf of Mexico is a big place. How did so many microbes find this oil?”

As Ardekani discovered, the performance of the microbes was affected by the surfactant, but not how anyone expected.

“There are several things that cause microorganisms to move,” she said.  “For example, the microbes near an oil spill may be motivated by chemotaxis, i.e., picking up the chemical trail of a potential food source. But the surfactant actually created a hydrodynamic phenomenon that caused microbes to gather in even greater numbers.”

Ardekani’s team tested its hypothesis in the lab, using E. coli cells, single-celled bacteria, whose behavior is well-known. The researchers 3D-printed a small chamber, where they could microscopically observe the cells’ movements in a liquid suspension, and then tested what happened when that liquid came into contact with another liquid of different viscosity. The results showed that the E. coli cells accumulated at higher density at the liquid-liquid interfaces, and even greater density at gas-liquid interfaces.

“Those surfactants changed the interface property,” Ardekani said. “If microbes are hydrodynamically attracted to gas-liquid interfaces, the presence of surfactants made it even more attractive.”

Using this experiment as a guide, researchers built theoretical models that successfully explained the complex fluid dynamics at these gas-liquid interfaces. Their research has been featured on the cover of the journal Soft Matter, and also published in the journal Physical Review E.

The use of dispersants during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was not without controversy; Scientists disagreed on whether the chemicals did more harm than good for the ecosystem. In the aftermath of the disaster, BP spent $500 million to establish the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, an independent organization that funds thorough scientific research in mitigating the effects of the spill.

Ardekani’s research is one of the results of that effort.

“We didn’t know any of this before the spill,” Ardekani said.  “The main reason they used dispersants was to break up the size of the oil droplets. But now we have discovered a new hydrodynamic mechanism, that adding surfactant causes microbes to spend more time near oil droplets. That, combined with chemotaxis, may potentially give microbes more time to decompose these hydrocarbons.”

The post How microbes find an oil spill appeared first on Green Prophet.

Oil spills are bad enough themselves. When they occur in fragile ecological regions like Israel’s Arava desert, they can be catastrophic.  Such is the case of the recent Negev Desert-Arava oil spill, which occurred as a result of a break in a large oil pipeline during renovation work.

This spill, occurring in early December, caused an estimated 600,000 gallons or 3 million liters of crude oil to run in virtual torrents through some of the Arava Valley’s most unique desert nature reserves. The spill has caused incalculable damage to fragile desert ecosystems. Environmentalists estimate that cleaning up this oil spill will cost more than $7.6 million USD to clean up and take years to do so.

This recent spill is not unique to the area, as other large spills have occurred during the shadowy history of this controversial pipeline.

In 2011, a massive jet fuel spill occurred when a tractor struck a portion of the Eilat Ashkelon pipeline, causing more than 1.5 million liters of aviation jet fuel to spill into the Nahal Zin stream, severely damaging a nearby nature reserve.

That spill alone took weeks to clean up; and resulting damage to the nature reserve and its fragile ecosystem has never been fully corrected. At that time, the Nahal Zin spill was referred to as “Israel’s worst ecological disaster.” So has the recent oil spill as well.

The Eilat Ashkelon oil pipeline was originally constructed in the 1960’s to bring oil purchased from Iran to refineries located on Israel’s Mediterranean seacoast. With Israel still in a state of war with Egypt, Israeli oil tankers and other ocean vessels could not use the Suez Canal.

The Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company, which originally constructed the oil pipeline when Israel still had diplomatic and commercial ties with Iran, has enjoyed a “veil of secrecy” that has been so tight and far reaching that numerous incidents of oil leaks and subsequent environmental and public health damage have been quietly covered up; until now anyway.

A legal petition has  been filed by the Israel Union for Environmental Defence (called Adam Teva V’din in Hebrew) with the High Court of Justice that asks that the pipeline company be forced to  release all available information on the oil spill; and to release all the audits and critical reports written about the company that were banned from publication by the military censor since a confidentiality order went into effect in 1968.

A January 5 article in Haaretz reported that activities by the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company have been kept secret under a gag order that is no longer relevant due to Israeli/Iranian relations being severed in 1979.

Lawsuits against the pipeline company are now in the process of being filed on damage caused to the Evrona Nature Reserve,  the communal settlement of Be’er Ora (where the oil spill took place); and by environmental activist Yoel Hadida, who demands “that the Israeli public get 820 million shekels ($210 million USD) in compensation for the damage done to public lands and natural assets, as well as 151.5 million shekels ($39 million USD) in compensation to area residents.”

Whether or not these lawsuits are successful, the damage caused by this recent pipeline rupture incident will have a serious effect on the Arava Desert environment and health of area residents for years to come.

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