In the past five years alone, there have been at least 11 leaks in the Israeli pipeline carrying oil between the Red Sea port of Eilat and Ashkelon on the Mediterranean coast. All were caused by equipment failure and holes in the pipeline. In the same period, there have been nine leaks or other environmental incidents resulting from sabotage, human error and other factors. These are the findings from documents obtained by Shomrim from the company that operates the 254-kilometer-long pipeline, the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company. Most of the leaks occurred within the company’s facilities and were contained after no more than a dozen liters of oil had been leaked – but they speak volumes about the poor state of the pipes and other equipment. At the same time, Israel is considering allowing the company to increase the amount of oil it transports every year and, last week, there was a meeting on the matter chaired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Shomrim has obtained a list of the environmental incidents recorded by the company since 2019, as well as the internal investigations that the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company conducted in their aftermath. The information was made available after the government scaled back the confidentiality order imposed on the company’s activities and following a request submitted by the Movement for Freedom of Information.

The list details 20 incidents of various nature and severity. One less severe incident, for example, occurred in April 2019 when there was a small leak at the company’s terminal in Eilat. While working on one of the oil storage tanks, a contractor leaned on part of the pipeline, which, according to an investigation, was extremely old and cracked immediately. Since the storage tank was, in any case, being cleaned and repaired there was primarily water inside. What leaked, therefore, was around 100 liters of water containing, according to estimates, around half a liter of oil. Work on the storage tank was halted immediately, the leak was plugged using technical equipment; 15 liters of contaminated soil were removed from the site.

In contrast, the most serious incident on the list happened in August 2021 near Moshav Mishan, close to Ashkelon. For reasons that remain unclear, around 150,000 liters of crude oil leaked from the company’s pipeline. Engineers managed to collect around 94,000 liters using vacuums and skimmers and at least 5,000 tons of contaminated soil was removed. Unlike the Eilar incident, which happened while the company was repairing a storage tanker that had already been identified as a weak point, an official from the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company told Shomrim that the Mishan incident happened during routine operations. These are the most dangerous incidents since it necessarily takes time to identify and respond to them – while crude oil continues to gush from the damaged pipeline.

The investigation into the Mishan incident, like that into the 2020 oil leak off the coast of Ashkelon, was not submitted as part of the freedom of information request since both incidents are still under criminal investigation by the Environmental Protection Ministry’s enforcement and deterrence arm, known as the Green Police. The Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company only submitted general details with regard to those two incidents, along with statements issued by the Environmental Protection Ministry after the incident. Similarly, the company did not submit any information about incidents that were the result of sabotage. A local newspaper in Eilat, for example, recently revealed that in December 2021, one of the company’s storage tankers at its Ashkelon depot was damaged by a rocket. This incident was not included in the list submitted to Shomrim and it is not possible to know how many other such incidents occurred – if any.

The most serious incident on the list happened in August 2021 close to Ashkelon. For reasons that remain unclear, around 150,000 liters of crude oil leaked from the company’s pipeline. Engineers managed to collect around 94,000 liters and at least 5,000 tons of contaminated soil was removed.

Most damage occurs outside EAPC facilities

An analysis of the list of incidents shows that the company’s safety procedures are effective when it comes to leaks within EAPC facilities, where incidents are identified as soon as they occur and are dealt with quickly – before they can become major leaks. The problem, however, is that not every leak happens in an EAPC facility. The worst cases of contamination – the Nahal Zin leak in 2011, when 1.5 million liters of jet fuel leaked and the Evrona nature reserve disaster in 2014 – happened outside the company’s facilities. It is no coincidence that the worst leak on the list, the Mishan incident, also happened outside an EAPC facility, at a random point along the hundreds of kilometers of pipeline.

Recently, the government tried to reverse the Environmental Protection Ministry’s “no-added-risk” policy, essentially bypassing it and ignoring the positions of the experts responsible for issuing hazardous material transportation licenses.

The list can also tell us something about the state of the infrastructure the company uses to transport crude oil. In 11 of the cases, as mentioned, the incident was caused by equipment failure – usually a hole or crack in an underground pipe. Three of the incidents were caused by sabotage of an exposed pipeline, including the above-mentioned rocket in 2021. Human error was the cause in just two of the cases.

Of the 11 cases that were caused by equipment failure, it was specifically noted during the investigation that the pipeline suffered from internal corrosion of the type that is known to eat away at the inner walls of the pipeline and increase the risk of oil leaks. More than three years ago, Shomrim reported that the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company’s own survey found that certain parts of its pipelines from Eilat to Haifa had lost up to 70 percent of the thickness of the pipeline due to corrosion. On one stretch of pipeline between Glilot and Haifa, the company found that the pipeline was down to just 15 percent of its original thickness.

“We noticed that there were many failure incidents [at the EAPC],” Ofri Haziz, acting head of the Environmental Protection Ministry’s Department of Prevention of Water Pollution from infrastructure, told Shomrim. According to Haziz, one of the reasons for this is that the company is the only one in Israel whose main activity is transporting crude oil, rather than fuel distillates. Crude oil contains water, which corrodes the insides of the pipeline, which Haziz says is “the main factor that causes damage to the pipeline.” That, at least, is true inside the company’s facilities.

In order to deal with the risk, the Environmental Protection Ministry’s demands of the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company are much stricter than for other companies – sometimes even going further than the international standard. “We recognized that there is a risk here for more failure incidents on a much larger scale,” Haziz adds, “so we implemented more demands from the company – beyond what we demand of other companies, so that we can manage the risk and have a complete picture of the situation.”

In 2018, for example, the ministry demanded that the company examine all the pipelines within its storage container terminal. As part of this examination, the company dug up the soil adjacent to its pipeline at 250 locations across Israel and there were physical examinations of the protective outer casing of the pipeline. In addition, the company conducted ultrasound tests to determine the condition of the inner casing of the pipeline. According to Haziz, international standards demand that these tests be conducted once a decade, while the Environmental Protection Ministry is insisting that the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company conduct a repeat test next year.

On occasion, the company itself decides to adopt more stringent standards. It does so, for example, in relation to its nationwide pipelines. The ministry demands that companies involved in the transportation or storage of fuel conduct periodical safety checks, but is happy with just pressure tests, where part of the pipeline is isolated from the rest and the internal pressure is increased for a defined period of time in order to identify leaks. The EAPC decided to be more stringent and adopted a system of “smart pigging” tests, which sends a kind of robot into the pipeline, equipped with diagnostic tools that show engineers the state of the inner casing in real-time. The robot is also capable of identifying anomalies and damage to the pipeline.

“Across the world, people are seeing how these inline tests, these “smart pigging” tests, have greatly reduced the number of failure incidents,” Haziz says. “We are all about managing risks and the more the company adopts and uses these advanced technologies, the lower the risk level.”

At the same time, he says that even the most advanced tests cannot guarantee that there will be no accidents, including accidents that can lead to an ecological disaster. “Statistically, the moment that you use equipment very frequently, it is natural that the likelihood of an accident increases. The more you use existing equipment, no matter how tight the monitoring is, the chances of an accident will rise. Therefore, we are in favor of maintaining the status quo – let the activity continue and let it be supervised. A failure can also be caused by a human and operational component. It's human nature".

More than three years ago, Shomrim reported that the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company’s own survey found that certain parts of its pipelines from Eilat to Haifa had lost up to 70 percent of the thickness of the pipeline due to corrosion.

Ministers want to bypass the experts

As Haziz mentioned, the condition of the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline infrastructure is critical, given that the government plans on significantly increasing the amount of oil it transports. In 2020, the company signed an agreement known as the Red-Med deal with companies from the United Arab Emirates, whereby it is supposed to increase the amount of oil that the government-owned oil company transports via Israel. Implementation of the agreement is expected to generate around $50 million a year in revenue for Israel, according to a recent report written by an inter-ministerial team headed by the director general of the Prime Minister’s Office, Yossi Shelley.

The Environmental Protection Ministry, however, was concerned about potential oil leaks that could devastate the Gulf of Eilat and its ecologically precarious coral reef and adopted a policy of “no-added-risk” in Eilat. The ministry refused to amend the company’s license to transport hazardous materials via the Eilat port beyond its current limit – 2 million liters a year – which had the practical result of thwarting plans to increase the amount of crude oil moving through the terminal. This policy was adopted during the tenure of the previous minister, Tamar Zandberg, and has the support of ministry experts.

Recently, the government – in a move spearheaded by the director general of the PMO, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and Minister for Regional Cooperation David Amsalem – tried to reverse the Environmental Protection Ministry’s “no-added-risk” policy, essentially bypassing it and ignoring the positions of the experts responsible for issuing hazardous material transportation licenses. The current environment minister, Idit Silman, opposed the move, as did green organizations and the mayors of Eilat and Ashkelon, in whose districts the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline terminals are located.

The issue has been raised several times in cabinet meetings over the past few months but has yet to come to a vote because of the pressure exerted by Silman and the mayors. Last week, at a meeting chaired by the prime minister and attended by Silman, Amsalem and Energy Minister Eli Cohen, a compromise was reached. According to the deal hammered out, the government will drop its sweeping plan to bypass the authority of the Environmental Protection Ministry and, instead, the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company will submit individual requests to the ministry every time it wants to exceed the current limit. The ministry will respond to each such request within 60 days.

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