Peres: Gas pumping shouldn't have begun on Sabbath

President congratulates shareholder Tshuva on ‘monumental deed,’ says decision to put gas into use on Saturday was a mistake

President Shimon Peres on Sunday congratulated Yitzhak Tshuva, the controlling shareholder of the Tamar natural gas field which was first put into use Saturday, for pumping the gas into Israel four years after the deposit was first discovered — adding, however, that the pumping should not have begun on the Sabbath.

Peres spoke with Tshuva and praised the “momentous deed” he had done “for the sake of Israel.”

However, at a meeting Sunday with Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, Peres said he was sorry that the pumping had begun on a Saturday, “of all days.”

With a skullcap on his head and the rabbi at his side, Peres said he thought the decision to utilize the gas on the Sabbath was misguided. “I don’t know why they did it,” he said. “They made a mistake, in my opinion.”

Amar, for his part, said he hoped it would be “the last mistake” where Israel’s natural gas discoveries were concerned.

“I hope that together with the profits … we won’t lose our heads and will observe the holy Sabbath, which is the soul of the people of Israel,” Amar said.

On Saturday, Tshuva said the start of pumping had come “months ahead of schedule,” adding that the gas flow “will make Israel energy independent.”

The Tamar deposit, discovered in 2009 some 90 kilometers west of Haifa, holds an estimated 8.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

On Saturday, hailed an “important day for the Israeli economy” by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, natural gas from the field was being pumped to a newly erected facility on the coast of Ashdod, connected to the gas field via pipelines laid out on the ocean floor, 150 kilometers long and 16 inches wide.

The gas was to be transferred on Sunday evening from the facility to a processing plant in Ashdod. From there, it will flow into the Israeli market. These newly harnessed resources promise to be a major boon to both the country’s public and private energy needs.

The gas from Tamar is expected to help meet Israel’s energy needs for the next 20 years, Channel 2 said, and will save the economy some NIS 13 billion (some $3.5 billion) per year. Its ahead-of-schedule use will also save Israeli citizens some cash — lowering a planned rise in electricity costs to 6 percent, less than originally planned.