Rosh Zohar

The story

Rosh Zohar is a natural gas field south of Arad. It was discovered in 1958 by the Israel Oil Company, a subsidiary of Naphtha, which was then government-owned, and its discovery was the first of its kind in the eastern Mediterranean. Until the discovery of the gas fields in the Mediterranean basin in the 2000s it was the largest gas field in Israel: its volume was estimated at about fifty-nine billion cubic feet. Close by two further small fields were discovered, Kidod and Kana'im. In 1961 the "Magal" company was founded, which laid about three hundred kilometers of transmission pipeline from the reservoir to its customers: the Dead Sea Works, the phosphate plants at Oron, and the industrial plants at Mishor Rotem, at Dimona and at Yeruham. In 1969 the subsidiary "Gaztiv" was founded, intended to carry gas for household consumption in Arad, in Yeruham and in Dimona by the method of "from the well to the burner"; in practice Arad and a few neighborhoods in Dimona were connected, and the gas served for cooking and for heating the homes of seven thousand five hundred of the residents of Arad. In 1970 demand exceeded supply, and a year later the plants began to return to liquid fuel. Production was stopped in 1979, and by then about fifty-three billion cubic feet had been produced in the field. Between 1980 and 1982 the reservoir served for the storage of gas produced in the "Sadot" field in Sinai, until the return of the oil fields to Egypt.

• Industry
• Arad