Oil in Israel!
(I have no knowledge of the source of this article and do not know Dell Griffin)
An Editorial by Dell Griffin
An oil well in the Shomron (Samaria) which a company directed by an hasidic geologist upon the inspiration of the Torah promise that "Joseph" would have the "blessings of the deep," promises to change everything in the region, Israel, the Middle East and possibly the world.
It appears to be the strongest economic reason to date for the nation of Israel to "hold on" to the entirity of the Shomron and not continue in the insanity of a land for unobtainable peace agreement with Yasser Arafat. It is also yet another indication that Hashem is pointing his finger directly at the Shomron and the promise that the children of Rachel, also known as the House of Joseph, must be allowed to return to their inheritances as an alternative to the Palestinian state.
Tovia Luskin, after finding 44 million barrels of oil at a test site at an undisclosed location in the Shomron in 1994, is planning a second well near Rosh Ha'ayin (the head of the eye), which he estimates to contain one billion barrels of oil and 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
"It is the same petroleum pool located under Syria, Saudi Arabia and Algeria," according to Shmuel Becker, an Israeli lawyer and co-partner with Luskin in Givot Olam Oil Exploration Ltd. "This well will turn Israel into one of the biggest oil suppliers in the world and will free the United States and the world from the Arab countries who for decades have been blackmailing the world with their oil." Givot Olam is the only oil company in the world which does not drill on Shabbat and is therefore ripe for blessing.
In an article published in a recent Jewish Press, Luskin, a professional petroleum geophysicist who immigrated from the former Soviet Union and became observant in 1982, said he got the idea for the location of the pool of oil during the Succot holiday in 1985.
While sitting in his succah and reading the last Parsha of the Torah, "Vezot Haberacha," he said he came across the blessing that Moses gave to the tribe of Joseph, and noted that the blessing was primarily to "his land."
And of Joseph he said, Blessed of Hashem be his LAND, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew and for the DEEP THAT COUCHETH BENEATH...and for the CHIEF THINGS OF THE ANCIENT MOUNTAINS and for the PRECIOUS THINGS OF THE LASTING HILLS and for the PRECIOUS THINGS OF THE EARTH and the fullness thereof, and for the good will of him that dwelt in the bush: let the blessing come upon the ROSH (head) of Joseph, and upon the top of the head of him that was separated from his brethren. (Deuteronomy 33:13, 15-16)
(The same sentiment is reflected in Parsha Vayehi (Genesis 49:25-26), where the "blessings of the deep that lieth under," are found "unto the utmost bound of the everlasing hills" on the "head of Joseph and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren." But this promise follows that in Genesis 48:19 in the same Parsha that clarifies Ephraim (the one separated from his brethren) would literally become the melo ha-goyim or fullness of the Gentiles. Becoming non-Jewish through assimilation, he would be separated from his brethren).
Rashi's commentary that the "hills in the territory of Joseph preceded the creation of all other hills," was a poetic description of fundamental principles of modern petroleum geology, Luskin reasoned. "Indeed, oil migrates upwards and is accumulated at the top of anticlines (ancient mountains) which are buried under younger sediments.
Since the establishment of the State in 1948, some 410 oil wells have been drilled in Israel; the majority in the coastal plain, the Negev and Dead Sea areas and later offshore the Mediterranean coast. Most have been exploratory at shallow horizons or very low prospectively at the Triassic or Permian in a southern Negev region. Those wells that have found oil have been found insufficient supplies to be commercially acceptable.
Luskin said the Ministry of Energy's two years' study of Hydrocarbon Potential of Israel, Highlights of Basin Analysis strongly emphasized structures in the Shomron, but "no exploration had been carried out in the land of Joseph, possibly due to political reasons."
The proposed site at Rosh Ha'ayin, which is on the road from Petah Tikva (literally "a door of hope") east to Shechem, (modern Nablus and the city in which Joseph is buried), lies within the inheritance of Ephraim, just inside the Green Line or in the corridor of the Shomron that is part of annexed Israel and anciently of the tribe of Ephraim. Luskin said Israeli officials told him there had been plans to drill there in 1981 but for some reason the plans did not materialize.