Red Sea Coral Reefs ‘under Threat’ from Israel-UAE Oil Deal

Israeli environmentalists warn that a UAE-Israeli oil pipeline agreement is threatening specific coral reefs in the Red Sea and may contribute to "the next environmental catastrophe."

After Israel normalized relations with the Gulf Arab nation late last year, the deal to carry Emirati crude oil by tanker to a pipeline in the Red Sea port of Eilat was signed and should come into force within months, reports AFP.

Last week, with experts warning of potential leaks and spills at the ageing port of Eilat and the Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection demanding "urgent" talks on the agreement, activists mobilised.

"In a parking lot overlooking the oil jetty of Eilat, they held a protest against what they see as a catastrophe waiting to happen, chanting that profits will be made "at the cost of corals.

“The coral reefs are 200 metres (yards) from where the oil will be unloaded,” said Shmulik Taggar, an Eilat resident and founding member of the Society for Conservation of the Red Sea Environment.

“They say the tankers are modern and there won’t be any problem,” he said, warning however that “there’s no way there won’t be a malfunction”.

He predicted that with the projected arrival of two to three tankers a week, traffic will be “back-to-back”.

This, he said, would also impact the aesthetic of a city promoting ecological tourism. “You can’t sell green tourism when you have oil tankers by the dock,” he said.

– Unique reefs –

The Jewish state and the UAE established ties last year as part of the US- brokered “Abraham Accords”.

A Memorandum of Understanding between Israel's state-owned Europe-Asia Pipeline Company (EAPC) and a new firm named MED-RED Land Bridge Ltd, a joint venture between the national holding company of Abu Dhabi and several Israeli companies, was one of the deals that followed.

In October, EAPC announced a “binding MoU” with MED-RED to bring crude from UAE to Eilat and then transport it by pipeline to Israel’s Mediterranean city of Ashkelon for onward export to Europe.

Taggar argued that deals benefitting the fossil fuel industry at the expense of the environment are “not in the spirit of our times”.

“It might have been appropriate in the 1960s and 1970s, before we were a developed state,” he said.

Activists argue that because of EAPC's position as a state-owned corporation operating in the critical energy market, the transaction evaded tough regulatory scrutiny.

Although coral populations around the world are endangered by bleaching caused by climate change, because of their unusual heat tolerance, the reefs in Eilat have remained stable.

Eilat’s coral beach reserve extends some 1.2 kilometres (almost a mile) off the city’s coast, protecting reefs that are home to a rich variety of marine life.

But their proximity to the EAPC port puts them at grave risk, Nadav Shashar, head of marine biology and biotechnology at Eilat’s Interuniversity Institute for Marine Science, told AFP.

The infrastructure is not set up to prevent accidents and only designed “to treat pollution once it’s already in the water,” he said.

Shashar, one of 230 experts who petitioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against the deal, argued that with the increase of shipments, “the result will be a constant leak of oil pollution”.

– ‘Get in the way’ –

After the agreement was struck in October, EAPC said it could increase oil flow through Eilat by “tens of millions of tonnes per year”.

Contacted by AFP, the company declined to discuss the deal’s specifics but stressed that its equipment was “state of the art” and up to international standards.

The environmental protection ministry said it had fulfilled its oversight role but also called for an “urgent discussion of all relevant governmental bodies” to review the deal.

The talks, a statement said, “would examine all angles — including the environmental ones — of increasing the volume of crude oil being transported”.

Shashar said the goal was not to close down EAPC but to “limit the extent of its use to something that can be handled”.

More militant views have been voiced by some activists, including the world Extinction Revolt movement's Michael Raphael.

Raphael, who was armed with a bullhorn at the recent protest, said he was planning to set up a chapter of the Extinction Revolt in Eilat to oppose the UAE agreement.

“If the problem isn’t solved, we’ll have to get in the way of things,” he said. “We don’t just demonstrate … we disrupt the work of those who pollute.”