2
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

My first acquaintance with the oil industry was in 1974, when as a young New York lawyer I represented several major New York utilities in a series of antitrust and breach of contract lawsuits against Chevron, Texaco and Mobil. The actions arose out of the Arab oil boycott following the 1973 Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur war. I was hooked.

In 1975 and 1976, as a lawyer in the Israeli Ministry of Finance, I represented the Israeli government in negotiating a series of oil exploration concessions and production sharing agreements with a group of American independent oil companies interested in exploring for oil in the Sinai Peninsula and the Gulf of Suez. These efforts led to the discovery of the Alma Field in the Gulf of Suez, which field was returned to Egypt in 1979 in the context of the Israeli-Egyptian peace accords.

I have been involved professionally with the oil and gas exploration industry in both the United States and Israel ever since. During the entire period I have been fascinated by the history and politics of oil and oil exploration, as well as by petroleum geology, and have read extensively on those subjects.

My acquaintance and interest with the Bible and ancient Middle Eastern religions and languages goes back even further - to my school days at a yeshiva ktana (Jewish religious elementary day school) in New York, high school Latin studies and college courses in linguistics, philosophy and religion.

My personal and professional background may have provided fertile ground for the journey I commenced in 2004, the current stage of which is reflected in The Search for Oil in the Land of Israel - A Biblical Treasure Hunt. Without the persistence of my good friend John Brown, founder of Zion Oil & Gas, Inc., a small American oil and gas exploration company exploring for oil on the coastal plains and hills of Israel, that I start on the journey and without my curiosity being sparked by my new friend Priscilla Hilton's insightful question about the meaning and origin of "NEFT", the modern Hebrew word for petroleum, however, it is doubtful the journey would ever have been commenced. To both John and Priscilla I owe a debt of gratitude for what has become one of the most fascinating ventures I have undertaken.

Before sharing the results to date of that venture, I must point out that, though an "amateur" - in the classic sense of one involved in an art or science not professionally but for his own pleasure, I am not a Bible scholar or a scholar of ancient Semitic languages. Neither am I a petroleum geologist. Rather, as noted above, I am a lawyer who for over 30 years been professionally involved in one form or another in oil and gas exploration ventures both in the United States and in Israel (including several mentioned here, specifically Zion Oil & Gas where I serve as General Counsel and a director and Ness Energy to which I acted as a legal advisor.) I have also read widely on the history of oil and gas exploration generally, including exploration in the Land of Israel, am fluent in Hebrew and have a general familiarity with Biblical and inter-Testamental literature, as well as with other religious traditions and texts of the

3
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

ancient Middle East. And I am aware of the fact that many major petroleum discoveries, including several of the large Caspian (the "oil fountains" of Baku), Iraqi (Baba Gurgur in Kurdistan near Kirkuk) and Persian fields, had their origins in ancient religious traditions associated with oil and gas seeps: - Baku was the territory of the "eternal pillars of fire" worshipped by the Zoroastrians and, according to tradition, the flaming seeps at Baba Gurgur were the "burning fiery furnace" into which Nebuchadnezzar cast the Jews.) (See, Yergin, D., The Prize [Simon & Schuster, New York, 1991], at pp. 57 and 204.) Indeed, local traditions of oil and gas seeps and asphalt deposits are one of the tools frequently used by petroleum exploration geologists in their work.

That said, I would emphasize that nothing I propose here should be viewed as a definitive interpretation of the texts involved or as a statement of my personal belief as to the meaning of any of them. Rather, my work should be read and understood only as a guide to the possible interpretation of certain texts in an attempt to shed some light on the basis for the beliefs of many who have been and continue to be interested and active in exploration for petroleum in the biblical Land of Israel.

The journey has not been mine alone. On it I have been accompanied and assisted by many to whom I would like to express my gratitude. To John Brown for his inspiration and persistence. To Priscilla Hilton for her curiosity and gift of Laurence Oliphant's Haifa or Life in Modern Palestine, with its surprising reference to a Persian fire temple at Mt. Carmel. To Shari Friedman - my aunt, "big sister" and fellow amateur - I owe a debt of gratitude for her invaluable comments on and critique of my text and argument in their early stages, as well as the use of her library and mid-night research assistance. The comments of geologist friends and colleagues - Dr. Ya'acov Mimran, Israeli Petroleum Commissioner, who called my attention to the aquifers in the Ramot Menasseh region, Dr. Avi Honigstein, Deputy Israeli Petroleum Commissioner, who provided me with access to the story of Hoshana Oil Co., Dr. Yehezkel "Charlie" Druckman, former Israeli Petroleum Commissioner, who clarified various issues relating to the Ramot Menasseh aquifers, Dr. Eliezer Kashai, former President of the Israel Geological Society and Vice President, Exploration of Zion Oil & Gas, who first brought to my attention the relationship and interbedding of chert sills and the oil shales and bituminous chalks throughout Israel, and Stephen Pierce, international consulting petroleum geologist and Zion Oil's Senior Geologist, from whose comments I benefited editorially as well as substantively - assisted me in placing my work in proper geological context and are highly valued. - - And The Map - without Gene Soltero's facility with computers, it might not have been and who ever heard of a Treasure Hunt without a map.

The comments and suggestions of my friend and fellow amateur Benzi Kahana cannot be forgotten, as will not his introducing me to the works of his grandfather, Prof. Avraham Kahana, a true biblical scholar who first translated many of the books of the Apocrypha, including the Books of the Maccabees, from the Greek back into the putative original, but since lost, Hebrew. The encouragement of David Halperin and Moshe Fox in the early stages of this adventure, when many thought my quest somewhat strange to say the least, was and remains much appreciated. Glen Perry is to be acknowledged for generally putting up with me (and me with him) throughout the process. Special thanks is due to Richard Rinberg, good friend and yet another fellow amateur, for his support and encouragement over the course of the journey, as

4
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

To all of them, I can only say that the journey is not yet over and I am sure their services will be called on yet again.

Philip Mandelker
Tel-Aviv, Israel
January 2006.

5
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

The Bible has been the principal source of inspiration to hundreds of millions of people through the ages. Many Jews and Christians believe the Bible to be the absolute Word of God and strive to derive significance from every word of the text. For these individuals, the Land of Israel, within whose borders most of the events told of in the Bible unfold is the Holy Land - ארץ הקודש - the Promised Land - and, as such, has been and continues to be a source of wonder and fascination.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Land of Israel again became readily accessible to European and American Christians and Jews. Jews began to return to the Land, then called Palestine, to resettle it, first in small bands of Zionist pioneers and then in larger and larger groups of immigrants. Christians came mostly as pilgrims to visit and pray at the Holy Sites, but also as scholars. Others came to settle as the Templars; and still others simply as tourists to explore and wonder - who can forget Mark Twain and his Innocents Abroad. But they all came with Bible in hand as their guidebook eager to uncover the Land's past and present secrets. The scholars established learned societies - the British Palestine Exploration Fund, the American School of Oriental Research, the German Deutscher Verein zur Erforschung Palaestinas. They came as archaeologists, as geographers, as ethnographers, as geologists, as agriculturalists; others came as seekers of fortune, as artists, as poets, as mystics. Some, inspired and guided by the words of the Bible, came to explore for oil.

6
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

Oil?! What have the Bible and the Land of Israel to do with oil? Israel may be the Land of Milk and Honey, a land even of olive oil - but petroleum? Everyone has heard of the famous quip that, when coming out of Sinai, Moses mistakenly turned left to Canaan (Israel), the only land in the Middle East without oil, when he should have turned right to Midian (modern Saudi Arabia). Yet there have been oil and gas discoveries in Israel. The Heletz oil field was discovered in 1955 and is still producing, if only marginally, today some 50 years later. The Zohar gas field was discovered near Arad in 1958 and is still in marginal production. Major world class gas discoveries (with estimated reserves of over 3 trillion cubic feet) were made in 1999 and 2000 in the Mediterranean Sea off the coasts of Israel and Gaza.

Indeed, hydrocarbons in the form of tars and asphalts have been known and mined in the Dead Sea region of the Land of Israel since Neolithic times 11-12,000 years ago (Mithen, S., After the Ice, [Phoenix, London, 2003], at pp. 74-75). The Bible in Genesis 14:10 refers to wells of tar or slime as the basis for the wealth of the Cities of the Plain, including Sodom and Gomorrah. Strabo the famous Greek geographer writing at the beginning of the 1^st Century of the Common Era (C.E. = A.D.) extensively describes the tar and asphalt seeps in the Dead Sea and the surrounding canyons. (Strabo, Geography, vol. XVI, Chap. 2, paras 42-45.) Josephus in The Jewish War, writing towards the end of the 1^st Century of the Common Era discusses the Dead Sea asphalts towards the end of Excursus V.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that in the 1830s, the Austrian mining engineer, Josef von Russeger, conducting a geological survey for the Egyptian government, should report on asphalt seeps from rocks on the southeastern shores of the Dead Sea. The German traveler Rothe describes asphalt seeps and small oil impregnated pools in the Nahal Arnon canyon on the southeastern shore of the Dead Sea in 1874. Similar sightings were made by various geologists and travelers in the late 19^th Century and early years of the 20^th Century in canyons along the southwestern shore of the Dead Sea (particularly in Nahal Heimar, where tar seeps can be seen even today) and at various other sites in the rift valley from the Dead Sea in the south to the Yarmuk River Valley just south of the Sea of Galilee in the north. (See Lavi, B., Ha'zahav Ha'shachor b'Eretz Yisrael (Black Gold in the Land of Israel) [Carmel, Jerusalem, 1999] ["Black Gold in Israel"], at pp. 24-27 and the sources cited there.)

Serious commercial interest in petroleum exploration in the Land of Israel goes back to the beginning of the 20^th century. The Socony Vacuum Company, predecessor of Mobil Oil, received exploration licenses in the years preceding World War I, though the first well was not commenced until 1947 by the British-dominated Iraqi Petroleum Company which had discovered the major oil fields in northern Iraq. This first well, known as the Huleikhat Well, was abandoned shortly after its commencement as a result of increasing violence in the area preceding Israel's independence. The well (renamed the Heletz #1 and still in marginal production) was reentered by two small Israeli oil exploration companies in 1955 and led to the Heletz field discovery. Regrettably though, essentially for geo-political reasons, following Israel's independence, the large international oil and gas companies which had been involved in the area since before World War I withdrew from Israel and have since steered

7
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

clear of the Land and refused to participate in oil and gas exploration activities there, preferring to protect their interests in the Arab and Islamic world.¹

Notwithstanding the desertion of the large international oil and gas companies following the establishment of the State, exploration continued in Israel over the ensuing 50 years, albeit in fits and starts, led by Israeli and a number of smaller American and Canadian companies. Among these companies have been at least seven, which have drilled or participated in the drilling of at least 11 exploratory wells, the founders of which were directly inspired by Biblical references they and many of their supporters interpreted as pointing to the existence of oil and gas reservoirs in particular areas in the Land of Israel. An eighth company, Hoshana Oil, directly inspired by Biblical references, acquired an exploration license, but never drilled a well. - A detailed listing of the companies, their founders and their activities is set out in the Appendix.

Interestingly, with the exception of one company, Ness Energy, founded by Texas oilman Harold "Hayseed" Stephens who, inspired by the stories in Genesis concerning the Cities of the Plain, was drawn to and active in the southwestern corner of the Dead Sea, all of the biblically inspired wildcatters have been drawn to areas in the Sharon Plain and on and around Mt. Carmel, just to its north.

Six of the wells drilled over the years by four companies (Asher Oil, Moriah Exploration, Camberly Exploration, Ness Energy) have been relatively shallow, drilled to targets in rocks of Jurassic age (150 million years old) and into younger rocks of Pliocene and Cretaceous age between 650 and 2,682 meters (2,136 and 8,800 feet) deep. These were all dry holes. Five of the wells drilled by another group of companies (Energy Exploration, Givot Olam Oil Exploration and Zion Oil & Gas) have been drilled to much deeper targets, between 3,500 and 6,531 meters (11,484 and 21,428 feet), into older rocks of Triassic age (200 to 250 million years ago). All these deeper wells - the Atlit #1 (known also as the Asher-Atlit well), the Meged #2, Meged #3, Meged #4 and the Ma'anit #1 (re-entry) - have had strong petroleum shows. Projects responsible for the drilling of four of these wells, the three Meged wells and the Ma'anit #1 well (re-entry) are in early 2006 still active: - the Meged wells drilled by Givot Olam, an Israeli public limited partnership, were recognized in 2004 by the Israeli Petroleum Commissioner as having resulted in a discovery although production has not yet been established; and the Ma'anit #1 (re-entry) well, drilled by Zion Oil & Gas, an American company, is undergoing appraisal and analysis.

What is it in the Bible that inspired the founders of these companies, mostly Christian evangelicals, but also a Jewish Habad Hasid, to spend years of their life and a good part of their personal fortunes on these activities? The founders of the companies that drilled the wells both on and at the foot of Mt. Carmel were generally inspired both by

¹At the end of the 1990s, following the discovery of the Mari field by the Israeli-American Yam Tethys (the Delek group and Noble Energy) consortium, British Gas, a large multinational natural gas company extensively involved in Egypt, got involved in off-shore exploration in the Mediterranean Sea off the Israeli coast. In early 2005, British Gas, after failing over a period of several years to interest other international oil and gas companies to participate in the project, returned almost all its rights to the Israeli government for a combination of geo-political and commercial reasons while retaining its Palestinian and Egyptian interests.

8
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

the story of Elijah's sacrifice described in I Kings 18:30-40, believing that the water poured on Elijah's offering was oil from oil seeps in the area - and also by the Blessing of Asher in Deuteronomy 33:24. The founders of the three companies who drilled and are drilling the deep wells in the central and northern parts of the Sharon Plain and on the Mediterranean coast north of the Plain of Sharon and west of Mt. Carmel were and continue to be inspired primarily by the Blessings of Joseph and Asher in Genesis 49:22-26 and Deuteronomy 33:13-17 and 24. The founder of Hoshana Oil, who was interested in the area just south and east of Mt. Carmel, was inspired by Blessings of Asher and Zebulon and Issachar in Deuteronomy 33:18-19 and 24.

What are these Blessings? How do the founders of these oil and gas exploration companies, many of them oil and gas professionals with years of industry experience, come to connect Biblical verses with potential petroleum reservoirs located deep underground? Is there any possible connection between the Blessings and the story of Elijah's sacrifice? With other references appearing in historical texts concerning what may possibly be oil seeps in the area of the Carmel?

In what follows I have tried to collect and present the various Biblical and historical references that I understand have inspired the founders of these petroleum exploration ventures.

I. THE BIBLICAL CLUES

The Translation: Except where otherwise noted, the translation used is that of The Jerusalem Bible (Koren, Jerusalem, 2000). The Jerusalem Bible is a Bible published with the original Hebrew text and an English translation printed on facing pages. In the words of the editors:

"The English Translation is not essentially new: it is rather a thoroughly corrected, modernized and revised version of those Anglo-Jewish Bibles which have long been accepted for home and synagogue use throughout the English-speaking world. As a basis for this edition, the 'Jewish Family Bible' of M. Friedlander, published with the sanction of the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, Dr. N. M. Adler in 1881, was selected. That version had two important merits: it was faithful to the Masora, or received Hebrew text, and it retained as much as Jewish sentiment permitted of the unsurpassed language and rhythm of the 'Authorized Version' [King James] of 1611. These advantages have been preserved in the present version.

"In addition to the text of Friedlander, a comparison was made with the interesting nineteenth century Jewish Bible of Isaac Lesser, and with other later translations. As a result many fresh readings have been adopted. The language of the older versions has been modernized where it was felt that the ancient linguistic and grammatical forms would cause difficulty for the present-day reader. Also many points of detail have been corrected in the light of modern scholarship, or as a result of fresh application to the Targumim and the classical Jewish commentators."

For ease of use, proper names do not appear in transliteration from the Hebrew as in The Jerusalem Bible, but in traditional English spelling. Also, rather than using

9
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

colons followed by small letters to show breaks between sentences as in The Jerusalem Bible which follows the traditional Hebrew punctuation, I follow the modern English tradition using periods followed by capital letters.

II. THE LANDS OF JOSEPH (MANASSEH AND EPHRAIM) AND ASHER - THE MAP.

12
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

Cartographical Note: There is a dispute among scholars as to whether the southern border of Asher extended down the Mediterranean coast to Caesarea and included the northern parts of Mt. Carmel or it ran along the Kishon Stream which flows along the northeastern flank of Mt. Carmel. In all cases it is generally agreed that the Lands of Manasseh abutted on and lay just to the south of the Lands of Asher.

Geographical Note: In the context of appreciating the geological implications of the map of the northern portions of the Lands of Manasseh, it should be mentioned that running approximately from somewhat east of Caesarea in the West to Megiddo in the East and representing the southern boundary of the Mt. Carmel range is Wadi Ara, the Ara Valley or Nahal I'ron (part of the ancient Via Maris or Way of the Sea that ran between Egypt and Damascus) which, from dipping beds and seismic data, geologists infer to be a major fault feature. A fault the size of Wadi Ara in a tectonically active area, in which the Carmel range and the northern Samarian hills (including the Umm-el-Fahm anticline) are located, is a phenomenon which is of major interest to petroleum geologists and explorationists.

III. A POSSIBLE INTERPRETATION OF THE BLESSINGS IN THE HUNT FOR PETROLEUM (ROCK OIL) IN ISRAEL

⁴The Midrash (traditional stories, typically with didactic intent, concerning Biblical topics collected during the Mishnaic period) relates the following in its telling of the famous meeting between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba in which the Queen of Sheba asks Solomon the three riddles. According to the Midrash, the second riddle was: "Dust from the earth it comes forth, and it feeds on the dust of the earth. It pours like water and looks to its home. What is it? He (King Solomon) answered and said to her: NEFT [petroleum]." (As related in Lavi, Black Gold in Israel, at p. 24.)

20
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

⁵The story of Job did not take place in Israel, but rather in the Land of Uz. There is a dispute as to where Uz was located. Some argue it was in the area of Damascus and others in northern Mesopotamia. The bulk of opinion, though, holds that Uz bordered on the lands of Edom between Petra in Southern Jordan and Basra in southern Iraq. See, Olam Ha'Tanach, vol. "I'yov" (Job) at p. 25, commentary on "B'ERETZ UTZ". These lands were and are in the desert with agriculture limited to mountain tops and oases in which olive trees do not as general matter grow. On the other hand, these are areas where there are oil seeps and surface deposits and outcrops of oil infused rocks as well as major oil fields. (See fn 7 below.) If this opinion is correct, it would appear doubtful that the reference in Job to rock pouring out rivers of oil is to olive oil. Rather, logic would appear to support a reading whereby the oil coming from the "TZUR" is "rock" oil or petroleum. If so, then, as the combination of words used in Job "SHEMEN" and "TZUR" is likely to refer to "rock oil", there is no reason not to conclude that, when "SHEMEN" appears in the same combination of words in the Song of Praise, that the reference is also to "rock oil".

⁶The Akkadian and Assyrian word for asphalt and bitumen - "iddû" or "ittu" - may have its origin in the name of the city of Hit on the banks of the Euphrates 150 miles northwest of Babylon. Hit, the center of the Mesopotamian bitumen industry even before the times of Sargon (c. 25th century B.C.E.), lies on the tributary stream of Is around which the famous Fountains of Is oil and asphalt seeps flowed (fn. 11 below). Forbes, Petroleum in Antiquity, at p. 25.

20
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

⁷The Land of Israel has large quantities of oil shales ("PITZLEI SHEMEN" in modern Hebrew), oil suffused rock, lying in thick surface strata in the hills of Bet Shemesh southwest of Jerusalem, mid-way between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean coast, and in the desert plateau of Mishor Rotem overlooking the Dead Sea. Several attempts over the past twenty-five years have been made to extract oil from these shales. These attempts have had very limited success, among other reasons because of the relatively poor quality (low organic content) of the rock and high costs of production. (Efforts to produce these shales have recently been renewed by Lapidoth-Heletz, L.P., an Israeli petroleum exploration company using a new Russian in situ production technology.) Some geologists are of the opinion that the Mishor Rotem shales and shales buried under the Dead Sea are the source of the oil and tar seeps in the Dead Sea area.
Interestingly, underlying these oil shales and bituminous chalk deposits which are also located throughout the Negev plateau are chert beds of the Senonian (Upper Cretaceous) age. To the north, the chert beds pass laterally into patches of highly bituminous (10-20% organic matter) chalk deposits located throughout the Land of the Shefala, the Sharon Plain, the Galilee and the Jordan Valley. Outcrops of these bituminous chalk-chert interbeddings appear at several sites in the Lower and Western Galilee and in the Jordan Valley. Surface deposits of bituminous limestones with organic content as high as 25% have been found near Hammath and Tiberias in the valleys of the Jordan River and its tributary the Yarmouk and on the high plains of Jordan above the eastern bank of the Jordan River and eastern shore of the Dead Sea. These deposits too are sometimes associated with chert beds. Forbes in Petroleum in Antiquity, at p. 25 (quoting Vitruvius, a Roman architect and engineer writing in the 1st Century BCE,) notes that it is possible that these deposits were known in antiquity.
In his Black Gold in Israel, at pp. 29-3, Lavi describes the attempts to explore the Yarmouk deposits in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. These attempts had their origin in stories of local Bedouin of oil seeps and a burning hill covered with "NEFT" at Tel-el-Hamid. Based on this and similar petroleum sightings in the Yarmouk valley, the first attempt to drill an oil well was commenced in 1914 at Macarin in the Yarmouk Valley, about 24 km (13 mi.) east of the Sea of Galilee. According to Lavi, the well was never completed and its findings were in dispute. During World War I, German engineers exploited bituminous shales containing crude oil in the Macarin area for the Hijazi trains. H. Michelson, "Geological Survey of the Golan Heights (With Some Remarks on Exploration for Hydrocarbons" (TAHAL Hydrology Division, 1982), at p. 13 and the works cited there.
In 1982, a water well was drilled at Ein Said on the northern bank of the Yarmouk some 6 kilometers (4 miles) northeast of Hammat -- 17 kilometers west of the Macarin well and 7 kilometers east of the Sea of Galilee. Unexpectedly, this well encountered several sections of rich bituminous chalks containing liquid hydrocarbons. These sections, which contained chert sills, were found at depths between 500 - 900 meters (1,600 - 3,000 ft.) Id.., at Fig. 1 and pp. 6, 12-14.
As noted above at page 20, the Hebrew word for chert, a flintlike rock, is "HALAMISH", one of the two words in the phrase appearing in the Song of Praise's reference to the source of the "oil" to come from "the flinty rock" -- "SHEMEN MEI-HALAMISH TZUR". The other word in the verse, "TZUR", means rock generically and, in certain contexts, is also used specifically as a variant of the word "TZOR" which is the Hebrew word for flint. It should be noted too that, as can be seen on the Map, the Yarmouk River was the southern boundary of the territories of Menasseh east of the Jordan.
Historically, oil shales, bituminous chalks and marls, and bituminous limestones (with organic content ranging from 4% to 20% and even up to 25%) were known as rockasphalts. Outcrops and surface deposits of rockasphalts occur throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean. They are known to exist in Syria, Armenia, Iraq, Iran, Kouweit, Bahrain, Albania and Sicily, as well as in Israel and Jordan. Many of these deposits were known in classical times. Forbes, Petroleum in Antiquity, at pp. 18-30. And according to Forbes, methods to produce bitumens (semi-solid and viscous hydrocarbons) from rockasphalts were known in antiquity and classical times, with vases of asphalts produced from rockasphalt found by archaeologists in the ancient Persian city of Susa, and references to the process in the works of Aetius of Amida, the 6th Century Byzantine physician, and al-Ma'sudi, the 10th Century Arab historian. Id., at pp. 37-39.

22
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

⁸The similarities between and tendencies to confuse "rock oil" and the more common - at least for the ancients - olive oil is not new or limited to persons attempting to interpret the Song of Praise and Blessing of Asher, but go at least back to the Greeks and Romans. In his Petroleum in Antiquity, Forbes refers to similar confusion in the armies of Alexander the Great in connection with oil seepages in Turkmenistan near the river Oxus as reported by the Roman historian Plutarch ("The greasy oily liquor 'Became perfectly clear, when the surface was taken off, and neither in taste or smell differed from real (Olive) oil nor was it inferior to it in smoothness and brightness, though there was no olive tree in that country.'") and to confusion about the nature of the seeps near Agrigento in Sicily reported in the 1st Century BCE by the Greek physician Dioscorides ("'Bitumen is found in its liquid state near Acragantium in Sicily. It floats on the surface of springs and is used in lamps instead of (olive) oil. Those who call it Sicilian oil are mistaken for it is an established fact that it is a kind of liquid bitumen.'"), with Pliny and Aristotle making similar observations. Forbes, Petroleum in Antiquity, at pp. 28 and 30. - In this connection, in his Early Petroleum History, at p. 85, Forbes relates that in 1690 a local chemist analyzed a clear, white and thick waxy petroleum found in a well near Viterbo, Italy "and found it very much like olive oil, as it did not have the usual sulpherous smell."

23
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

24
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

⁹In Diderot's and d'Alembert's famous 18th Century Encyclopedie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, Arts et des Metiers, Tome XI, p. 15, edit. 1774, at the entry for "Naphta" there appears a description which is quite reminiscent of the Biblical description of Elijah's sacrifice: "Naphta is what Naturalists call a white, transparent, very fluid and light bitumen which floats on water. This substance is so highly inflammable that it can ignite at a distance; it has a penetrating odour and burns without leaving any residue." (As quoted in Forbes, Early Petroleum History, at pp. 43-44.) - A scientific text published in Paris in 1694 describes petroleum from oil seeps near Modena in Italy: "The white naphta which we normally call white petroleum oil, both by reason of its whiteness, transparency and beauty and because it cannot mix with anything at all, is lighter than anything you may add to it, always rising to the surface...which makes it highly volatile and liable to catch fire,..." (As quoted in Forbes, Early Petroleum History, at pp. 93-94.) It is in the area around Modena, in the Po Valley region of Italy, that some of the largest petroleum fields in Europe have been discovered. - Ancient Japanese texts talk of seeps of "burning water" in the Echigo region during the reign of Tenjitenno in about 615 C.E., in which region petroleum was traditionally collected from "ditches excavated" along an outcrop and from hand dug wells. Forbes, Early Petroleum History, at p. 180. It was in this region that one of the few Japanese oil fields was discovered in the late 19th Century. Id., at p. 181.

25
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

¹⁰According to Forbes, Vitruvius, the Roman architect and engineer writing in the 1st Century BCE, mentioned oil seeps near Jaffa, while Dioscorides, the Greek physician, also writing in the 1st Century BCE and Pliny, the Roman historian, writing in the 1st Century CE, both mention oil seeps near the city of Sidon in what is today southern Lebanon. (Forbes, Petroleum in Antiquity, at p. 18.) Mt. Carmel lies equidistant between Jaffa and Sidon, Sidon lying about 60 miles to its north and Jaffa about 60 miles to its south.

26
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

IV. THE NEXT STEP - THE ROLE OF MAN AND SCIENCE

Euphrates 150 miles northwest of Babylon, were known as the Fountains of Is and Fountains of Pitch and referred to as "springs" in the annals of Tukulti Ninurta II (890-884 BCE): "In front of Hit, by the bitumen springs. . ." and in several 16th century texts of European travelers (Forbes, Petroleum in Antiquity, at pp. 25-27); the oil seep near the small French village of Gabian in the Languedoc region of southern France from which oil was extracted since the 17th century and where the first French oil field was discovered in the 1920s, was known as the "Font de L'Oli", the Fountain of Oil (Forbes, Early Petroleum History, at pp. 1ff.)

27
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

_______________________

28
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

29
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

30
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

31
Copyright 2006 by Philip Mandelker

---

Dates Referenced Herein   and   Documents Incorporated by Reference

This ‘FWP’ Filing		Date		Other Filings
Filed on:		2/8/06		FWP
		6/30/05
				List all Filings

↑Top

---

Filing Submission 0001131312-06-000057   –   Alternative Formats (Word / Rich Text, HTML, Plain Text, et al.)

---

---

Copyright © 2024 Fran Finnegan & Company LLC – All Rights Reserved.
About — Privacy — Redactions — Help — Fri., Apr. 26, 4:32:05.2pm ET