In plea deal, oil company to pay just $400,000 for Israel’s worst-ever spill

Court upholds convictions for Europe Asia Pipeline Company and senior employee over burst pipe that caused enduring damage to southern Israel’s Evrona Nature Reserve in 2014

Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter

A massive oil leak caused by the rupture of a Europe Asia Pipeline Company line in the Evrona nature reserve in 2014. (Environmental Protection Ministry)
A massive oil leak caused by the rupture of a Europe Asia Pipeline Company line in the Evrona nature reserve in 2014. (Environmental Protection Ministry)

The controversial Europe Asia Pipeline Company will pay just over NIS 1.5 million ($415,000) in a criminal case brought by the state for causing the worst oil spill in Israel’s history, following an Ashkelon court’s approval of a plea deal.

Shlomi Levy, who served as EAPC deputy director of operations at the time, will be fined NIS 35,000 ($9,700), according to the deal.

Haim Bar Sela, who served as the field operations manager and was ultimately not convicted, will pay NIS 30,000 ($8,300) and perform 360 hours of community service.

Environmental advocacy group Adam Teva V’Din slammed the decision by Judge Zohar Dolev Lehmann at the Ashkelon Magistrate’s Court as inappropriate given the “magnitude of the damage that has been caused and continues to be caused to the environment, nature and health, as described in detail in the verdict.”

Two other defendants decided not to join the plea agreement and will be judged on their own defense.

On December 3, 2014, some 5 million liters (1.32 million US gallons) of crude oil poured out of a pipe owned by the EAPC into the Evrona Nature Reserve in the Arava Desert.

Oil seeps between desert bushes in the Evrona Nature Reserve, December 7, 2014. (Environmental Protection Ministry spokesperson/Roi Talbi)

The spill took place near Be’er Ora, some 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) north of Eilat, during maintenance work prior to the construction of a new airport in Timna.

Initial operations to pump the oil and clear it out of the reserve reduced the environmental damage, but left about 145 dunams (36 acres) of land soaked in black oil. The land has not recovered to this day.

In 2018, the Environmental Protection Ministry assessed the damage in Evrona at NIS 281 million ($78 million). In 2019, it reached a deal in a civil class action suit it had joined whereby EAPC would pay NIS 100 million ($28 million) in compensation.

The powerful yet secretive EAPC was originally created in 1968 as a joint Israeli-Iranian venture to carry Asian oil from Eilat to Europe via a network of pipelines that reach from Eilat to Ashkelon and up the length of Israel to Haifa.

Almost three years ago, the company and several former senior employees, including the director-general, received criminal convictions for two cases of pollution at the Zin stream in southern Israel in 2011.

Five years ago, the company and various employees were slapped with criminal convictions for harming protected nature in the Red Sea after damaging more than 2,600 corals off the southern coastal town of Eilat.

In 2020, shortly after the signing of the Abraham Accords that normalized relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, the EAPC signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with a consortium of Israeli and Emirati businesspeople to bring Gulf oil to the EAPC’s Eilat terminal on the Red Sea, channel it overground via EAPC pipelines to Ashkelon on the Mediterranean, and load it onto tankers bound for Europe.

But in 2021, then-environmental protection minister Tamar Zandberg introduced a “zero additional risk” policy, limiting oil imports to two million tons a year — below what was needed to honor the MOU.

View of the Europe Asia Pipeline Company’s oil terminal in the southern city of Eilat, January 14, 2022. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)

Zandberg’s aim was to reduce the risk of oil leaks that could decimate Eilat’s world-renowned coral reefs.  Her decision came after the EAPC had submitted what she and ministry officials saw as inadequate environmental risk surveys.

The EAPC lobbied to have this cap removed, and in December, despite considerable public opposition, the government announced it was scrapping Zandberg’s policy.

Local and regional authorities, residents, and environmental and civil society groups have vowed to fight the government’s decision.

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