Genie Energy

In February 2013, Israeli authorities awarded Afek Oil and Gas an exclusive 36-month petroleum exploration license to a 153-square-mile (400 km²) plot in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which the UN recognizes to be Syrian territory.[16][17][18][19] Afek subsequently conducted above-ground geophysical tests and based on its preliminary analysis, has applied for a ten well exploratory drilling program.[20] South of Katzrin in the southern Golan Heights in 2015, Afek discovered a substantial amount of oil and natural gas reserves which would make Israel energy self-sufficient.[lower-alpha 1][21][22][23] The company had drilled a series of exploratory wells including Ness-5, just northwest of the Avnei Eitan and Nov moshavim and south of Kibbutz Natur and the town of Katzrin; Ness-3, near the Bnei Yehuda industrial area; Ness-6, located near the entrance of Moshav Kanaf, just southeast of Gamla;[24] and Ness 10 north of the Sheikh-Ali Fault. In November 2017, the company announced that it suspended its exploratory drilling program as the well's target zone does not contain commercially producible quantities of oil or natural gas.[25]

Human rights groups have said the drilling violates international law as Golan Heights is an occupied territory.[26]

American Shale Oil (AMSO) was a joint venture between Genie Energy and Total S.A.[27] Genie announced in May 2016 that the partners were closing the venture.[28] and its pilot plant facilities located outside of Rifle, Colorado, were subsequently decommissioned and removed. AMSO received in 2006 a Research, Development and Demonstration (RD&D) lease from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Colorado's Piceance Basin in order to develop a process for generating oil and gas from deep buried oil shale.[29] The lease comprised a tract of 160 acres (65 ha), and was granted for an initial term of 10 years with the possibility of up to a 5-year extension upon proof of diligent progress toward commercial production.[30] AMSO's tech team was headed by Dr. Alan Burnham, a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.[31] AMSO's proposed technology was called CCR (Conduction, Convection, Reflux).[29]

Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI) was founded in 2008 to develop oil shale in Israel. In July 2011, the company received a one-year extension of a three-year license to explore oil shale resources on 238 square kilometres (92 sq mi) in Israel's Shefela region.[32] In September 2014, a government planning committee rejected a building permit for the project. The committee decision essentially killed the project, as IEI did not pursue any means of appeal.[33] By the time of the committee ruling most of the staff of IEI, including Chief Scientist Harold Vinegar, had moved to work at the sister company, Afek.

IEI planned to use In-Situ Conversion Process technology for its pilot project, following the format a 1995 trial by Royal Dutch Shell. Shell subsequently shut down its work on developing the technology.

Israel's major environmental organizations, including the Jewish National Fund, the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, Greenpeace, and the Israel Union for Environmental Defense protested against the IEI license. Environmental concerns include the potential for contaminating Israel's Shfela aquifer, which runs underneath the Shfela oil shale formation, for destroying a rural region of Israel that currently promotes eco-tourism, and for reversing Israel's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Residents of the local community of Adullam and their supporters led the campaign to stop the IEI work, citing both the environmental damage and the questionable economic value of the project.[34]