At a conference about health and environment on Monday, September 3, organized by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Director General Alona Sheffer decried the recent recommendation of the Tzemach Committee to export most of the natural gas Israel develops in the coming years. The committee, headed by Shaul Tzemach, director general of the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources, had been tasked with establishing the government's policy on natural gas, in the wake of the discovery of large gas fields in Israeli territory.

Sheffer: "Since 2009, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has made great efforts to reduce industrial pollution in Haifa and to incentivize factories to switch from more polluting oils to gas. As a result, the concentration of organic materials in the air in Haifa [which is heavily populated by pollution-emitting factories] has decreased by some 40%. Oil Refineries Ltd. has reduced its sulfur dioxide emissions by a similar amount.

"Residents of Haifa Bay and the factories there suffered last year as a result of the gas shortage in Israel. I would have liked to say that the government learned a lesson from this trauma, and that it decreed that from now on, the state will keep its natural gas for its local economy and for Israeli industry.

"There is no doubt that if the transportation sector would be based on natural gas, rather than oil, air pollution in the country would be greatly reduced. Unfortunately, however, the reality is more grim. The Tzemach Committee did not accept our demands and decided to export the majority of Israel's gas abroad, and not to invest thought into creating a gas-based transportation industry. Israel must not export gas to China at the expense of Haifa."