Energy – Like oil and water

There’s an old saying in the oil industry: “Oil is like a wild animal. Whoever captures it has it.” The late American oil magnate, Jean Paul Getty, may have been talking about the oil and gas market of the 1950s, but his words continue to ring true. Ever since a joint US-Israeli exploration group headed by Texas-based Noble Energy discovered a large natural gas deposit at Tamar (90 kilometers off the coast of Haifa) in January, the proverbial animal has been officially let out of its cage in the Eastern Mediterranean. Analysts estimate reserves at Tamar of around 142 billion cubic meters (BCM), valued at around $3.6 billion, with a $1.5 billion extraction cost. The discovery has been heralded by Noble’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Charles Davidson as possibly “the largest discovery in the company’s history.” For a company like Noble that boasts assets of more than $12 billion,