Report blasts state oil company for not addressing problems in Eilat-Ashkelon line
State comptroller says Europe Asia Pipeline Company gave out bonuses during year of oil leak, criticizes government for foot-dragging on oil import policy
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter

The state-owned Europe Asia Pipeline Company failed to deal with three valves along the pipe that channels crude oil between Eilat on the Red Sea and Ashkelon on the Mediterranean, despite calls to do so since 2015 and the fact that much of the line runs through areas of high to very high environmental sensitivity, the state comptroller says in a report published Wednesday.
Highlighting a list of issues to be put right, Matanyahu Englman paints a picture of dysfunctional activity within the EAPC and the government. He describes how the former awarded performance bonuses to staff in the year of a substantial oil leak from one of its pipes. He also lambasts governments for failing to prepare the oil infrastructure for an emergency such as war and taking two and a half years to decide whether to lift environmental protection restrictions on the quantities of oil the company could import.
Of the 254 kilometers (158 miles) of pipeline running between Eilat and Ashkelon, 119 kilometers (74 miles) pass through areas of “high to very high environmental sensitivity,” according to the report, and 101 kilometers (63 miles) cross nature reserves and national parks.
Three significant oil leaks have occurred in recent years — along the seasonal Zin Stream near the Dead Sea in 2011, in the Evrona Nature Reserve near Eilat in 2014, and close to Moshav Mash’en near Ashkelon in 2021.
Yet, the company failed to heed a recommendation in 2015 contained in an environmental risk survey carried out on its behalf (and repeated by the Environmental Protection Ministry in 2022) to install two additional valves along a section of the Eilat to Ashkelon pipeline (Line 42) that posed a high risk and move an additional valve (in a situation of low risk).
Furthermore, parts of Line 42 run above ground, the state comptroller points out, in contravention of water regulations. This exposes them to damage from flash floods and the stones carried along by such floods, he warns.

Englman says the EAPC’s Eilat port – one of four countrywide that can be used to unload oil and oil byproducts (distillates) — was unprepared on the eve of the war that broke out between the IDF and Hamas in 2023 following the terror group’s murderous invasion of southern Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 abducted to the Gaza Strip.
This, he charges, was due to limits on the amount of oil EAPC could import imposed by the Environmental Protection Ministry in 2021 following a tussle over an environmental risk survey, plus the Energy Ministry’s failure to transfer NIS 130 million ($36 million) to upgrade the Eilat port to receive and store distillates.
The government removed the environmental limits (imposed to protect Eilat’s world-renowned corals) in December after years of EAPC pressure.
The EAPC said in response that it was preparing to move one of the valves, but that international consultants had recommended against replacing the other two, saying the dangers outweighed the benefits and that monitoring and proper maintenance were preferable.
It welcomed the report, saying it “unequivocally determined that the restrictions imposed by the Environmental Protection Ministry on the EAPC endangered Israel’s energy security on the eve” of the war.
Environmental organizations issued a joint statement in response, saying, “Just two weeks ago, the court sentenced the EAPC and its senior officials for the serious oil spill in Evrona in 2014, and now the report states that for nine years, the EAPC has not taken the actions required to reduce the risk of another leak from the pipeline that stretches over 254 kilometers in the most sensitive areas of Israel.”
The statement added, “The oil transported in recent years in the Gulf of Eilat is not intended for the Israeli economy. This is in contrast to the EAPC’s unfounded statements linking oil transportation in Eilat to Israel’s energy security.”
The Eilat oil port was closed for most of the war because of missile attacks from Iran-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen.
The EAPC was set up in 1968, during the War of Attrition, when Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser threatened the Suez Canal. At that time, Iran supplied much of Israel’s oil but did so secretly to avoid creating tension with Arab countries. Oil was shipped from Iran via the Red Sea to Israel’s Eilat port. From there, a pipeline took it to the port of Ashkelon, where it could be shipped to the Mediterranean, thus avoiding the need to take it through the Suez Canal. Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, this deal ended, but the company, run solely by Israel, continued to operate in secrecy.