Red Sea coral reefs ‘at risk’ from Israeli-UAE oil deal

The agreement to take Emirati crude oil by tanker to a pipeline in the Red Sea port of Eilat was signed after Israel established normal ties with the Gulf Arab nation at the end of last year and should come into effect within months.

With experts warning of a possible leak and spill at the aging port of Eilat, and the Ministry of Environmental Protection calling for “urgent” talks on the agreement, protesters last week.

They held a protest in a parking lot overlooking the Eilat oil jetty against what they see as a catastrophe waiting to happen, singing that profits will be made “at the expense of corals.”

“The coral reefs are 200 meters from where the oil is loaded,” said Shmulik Taggar, a resident of Eilat and a founding member of the Red Sea Environmental Conservation Society.

“They say the tankers are modern and there will be no problem,” he said, warning however “that there will be no way there will be no mistake.”

He predicted that with the expectation of two or three tankers a week, traffic would be “back.”

This, he said, would also impact on the beauty of a city encouraging ecological tourism.

“You can’t sell green tourism when you have oil tankers next to the dock,” he said.

Israel and the UAE established ties last year as part of Abraham Accords, which broke the US.

One of the contracts that followed was a memorandum of understanding between the state-owned Israel-Asia Pipe Company (EAPC) and a new entity called MED-RED Land Bridge Ltd – a joint venture between the Abu Dhabi National Property Company and several Israeli companies.

In October, EAPC announced a “binding MoU” with MED-RED to transport crude from UAE to Eilat and then transport it by pipeline to Israeli city Ashkelon for export to Europe.

Taggar argued that the contracts that are beneficial to 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.

Campaigners argue that the agreement avoided strict regulatory scrutiny because of EAPC’s status as a state-owned company operating in the sensitive energy sector.

Although coral populations around the world are at risk from swells caused by climate change, the reefs in Eilat have remained stable due to their exceptional heat.

The Eilat coral beach reserve extends approximately 1.2 kilometers off the coast of the area, protecting reefs that are home to a wide variety of marine life.

But their proximity to the EAPC port puts them at great risk, said Nadav Shashar, head of marine biology and biotechnology at the Eilat Diversity Institute for Marine Science.

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

Shashar, one of 230 experts who petitioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against the deal, argued that with a load increase, “the result will be that oil pollution will go out on a regular basis. “

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

In the case of AFP, the company declined to comment on the details of the contract but stressed that its equipment was “modern” and up to international standards.

The environmental protection ministry said it had fulfilled its role but also called for an “urgent debate of all relevant government agencies” to review the agreement.

The talks, a statement said, “explored all areas – including the environmental ones – about increasing the amount of crude oil it carries.”

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