Government scraps policy restricting Eilat oil imports; environmental groups decry ‘disaster’

The government overturns a three-year-old Environmental Protection Ministry policy of capping oil imports at the port of Eilat on the Red Sea to reduce the risk of oil leaks.

Eilat is home to world-renowned corals that underpin the resort city’s economy.

The move comes after years of lobbying by the state-owned Europe Asia Pipeline Company (EAPC) against a decision by the former Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg in 2021.

Infuriated by what she and her officials saw as inadequate environmental risk surveys, Zandberg limited oil imports to two million tons annually.

That was a year after the EAPC signed a deal with Red Med, a consortium of Israeli and UAE businesspeople, which would see Gulf oil offloaded at the EAPC’s Eilat terminal, on the Red Sea, and channeled overground via EAPC’s pipelines to Ashkelon on the Mediterranean. From there, the oil would be reloaded onto tankers bound for Europe.

The Prime Minister’s Office informed the Environmental Protection Ministry just 14 hours before it was due to discuss the government decision, prompting an emergency meeting yesterday and a letter from seven southern local authority heads today urging the prime minister to focus on rebuilding the south after Hamas’s deadly onslaught of October 7, 2023, rather than risk a devastating oil spill.

A wide coalition of environment, public health, civil society, state and local government groups have consistently opposed attempts by the Prime Minister’s Office and its CEO, Yossi Shelley, to undermine the Environmental Protection Ministry and side with the EAPC on the issue.

Speaking on behalf of this coalition, the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) calls today’s decision a “disaster.”

“The former head of the National Security Council, Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, warns that increasing oil transportation in the Gulf of Eilat will constitute a security and political risk, dozens of heads of authorities and regional councils are issuing warnings, the Israel Desalination Society is raising a red flag, public health doctors are strongly opposed, hundreds of environmental scientists and ecologists are warning of irreversible damage to the coral reef, to tourism and to the economy of the city of Eilat,” the SPNI says in a statement.

“But despite this, the Israeli government continues its policy of neglect and its mad dash toward the next failure, endangering Eilat, the Negev, the Arava, Ashkelon and all of Israel’s coastal cities.”

“The government is once again ignoring the many risks and acting out of considerations of greed and political interest, against the public and national interest.”

The coalition, it says, will continue to act against any increase in the transportation of oil by the EAPC.

The Europe Asia Pipeline Company has a shoddy environmental record. Among various oil leaks, it was responsible a decade ago for the largest environmental disaster in Israel’s history when one of its pipelines ruptured, sending some 1.3 million gallons of crude oil into the Evrona Nature Reserve in southern Israel. The reserve has not yet recovered.

Earlier today, the EAPC said in a statement: “An inter-ministerial professional committee… has unequivocally determined that the EAPC port in Eilat should be allowed to operate fully, based on the professional opinions submitted by the ministries of energy, defense, finance and foreign affairs, the National Security Council, and the Companies Authority. Upholding the decision of former Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg, which was made without authority and without a professional basis, will lead to the closure of the strategic EAPC port in Eilat and harm the energy security of the State of Israel.”