Texan's prayers for oil may just be answered<br><br> - Haaretz

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Sun., December 02, 2007 Kislev 22, 5768

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		John Brown, the devout businessman behind the project of drilling for oil in Israel based on biblical prophecy.

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Texan's prayers for oil may just be answered

By Daphna Berman

Tags: Israel, Zion Oil and Gas

Zion Oil and Gas is to start drilling in Israel using the Bible as its map. Petroleum experts say the company could be on to something.

Drilling for oil in Israel based on biblical prophecy may sound farfetched, but that hasn't discouraged a Dallas-based oil company from launching a multimillion dollar campaign inspired by verses from Deuteronomy. Founded by an evangelical Christian from Texas, Zion Oil and Gas is based on a religiously inspired vision that skeptics have been quick to dismiss. But a team of petroleum engineers and geologists in Israel and Texas are convinced that John Brown, the devout businessman behind the project, might just be on to something; and they're itching to drill, so that they can find out just what that something is.

Brown's oil vision began in May 1983 during his first visit to Israel and two years after he became a born-again Christian. Inspired by a verse in Kings I, he prayed for oil - something the self-described Zionist hoped could bring Israel greater political independence. "I didn't turn into a nutcase," he insisted over the phone this week. "This is purely from the heart. My destiny and purpose here is to fulfill the prophecies of the Bible."

Brown wasn't in the oil business at the time, nor did he have any acute understanding of drilling, petrol engineering, or geology. But that didn't stop him from dedicating the past 20 years or so to discovering oil in the Holy Land. Four years ago, he founded Zion Oil and the company has since acquired a drilling license that covers more than 385,000 dunam off the Israeli coastal plane; drilling may begin as early as September.

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Asher's toe

For Brown, the Bible has not just pointed to the existence of oil reserves, but their exact location as well. Certain passages in the Old Testament, he believes, have made cryptic reference to treasures lying deep beneath what is present day Kibbutz Ma'anit. Using a map of ancient Israel and the geographical locations of each tribe, Brown concluded that the suitable drilling locale would be somewhere between the head of Joseph, a chunk of land given to the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim, and the tip of the land once inhabited by the tribe of Asher.

"Most blessed of sons be Asher," Moses says in Deuteronomy 33:24 shortly before his death. "May he be the favorite of his brothers, may he dip his foot in oil." Brown followed Asher's plot of land to its southern tip, a formation he thought resembled a foot. And as Brown explains, the Zion drilling license is located just below Asher's toe.

Finding oil is not a matter of if, says Brown, but when. In a southern drawl, Brown explains that finding oil in Israel is simply a matter of bashert. "I'm not trying to proselytize or convert," he told Anglo File. "I had a specific request for oil and the Lord gave me that prayer."

Multimillion backing

But spiritual experiences and religious fervor aren't the only thing that's backing this proposed multimillion dollar project. Since he founded the company, Brown has consulted various geologists and petroleum engineers. He met Glen Perry, a petroleum engineer, in 1999 and commissioned him, along with expert geologist Eliezer Kashai, to do some preliminary research in and around Kibbutz Ma'anit. Perry, who has worked for multinational petrol companies like Exxon, admitted he was skeptical of Brown's bible-based business venture - and told him so at the very start of the project. But nearly five years later, Perry is now convinced that drilling at the foot of Asher is a viable, and worthy, investment.

"People who say there is no oil in Israel speak out of ignorance," the Israel-based engineer from Texas explained this week from Geneva, where he was on Passover break. "It's the biblical aspect that brought John [Brown], but our team has looked purely at the technical aspects of this project."

According to Perry, a 200 million-year-old reef structure from the Triassic age may lie four thousand meters beneath the surface of Kibbutz Ma'anit. Some of the largest oil field in the Middle East and North Africa, he notes, are on top of reef structures like the one that may be deep beneath the foot of Asher, and though drilling is always a risky venture, Perry is confident that the Zion project is a sound one. Most of the drilling in Israel has been shallow, he explains, and there have been very few attempts to drill into the Jurassic formations. Five thousand meters below the ground, he adds, "is a very under-explored area."

Eugene Soltero, the president and chief operating officer of Zion, agrees. Like Perry, Soltero has a long history in the Texas oil business, none of which has been inspired by verses from the Bible. But he too is convinced that drilling at the foot of Asher is worthwhile and has already classified the Zion drill, which is also known as the Joseph project, as a "class A drillable prospect [with] reasonable chances of success."

According to Soltero, a location is considered drillable if the chances of hitting a huge reservoir are 10 percent, and if the chances of hitting something that would cover the drilling costs would be 50 percent. He says U.S. security rules prohibit him from speaking in particulars about the viability of the Joseph project, but he is convinced that the foot of Asher is "drillable by any international standards."

"Everyone who has been involved in oil and gas was somewhat skeptical at the beginning," added Philip Mandelker, a Tel Aviv-based lawyer and Zion's general counsel, who has also served as a legal adviser to the Israeli Petroleum Commissioner. "But after reviewing the information, we all realized that this project is really substantial."

Like the rest of the Zion team, Mandelker isn't deflated by Israel's relatively unimpressive oil history. And as Soltero explains, natural reserves embedded in reefs similar to the one possibly under Kibbutz Ma'anit were discovered in Texas more than 80 years after the state's first oil discovery.

In the meantime, however, Zion is in desperate need of serious investors. They announced their initial public offering in February with stock going for $5 a share, and are looking to raise a minimum of $6.5 million. They haven't yet reached the first threshold of $1 million, but that doesn't bother Zion management, who say that mail in the U.S. has been slow and many of Zion's potential investors haven't even received the company's prospectus.

Zion had initially hoped to target wealthy American Jews looking to support pro-Israel business ventures. Brown traveled to South Florida and even attended prayer services and Shabbat dinners in the Palm Beach area. But the congregants weren't interested, for reasons he has only gradually begun to understand. "The Jewish believers don't see a business venture as a mitzvah," he said. "If they have a million dollars, they would give it to Israel, but they'd give it directly to Israel, and not to Zion."

Somewhat disappointed by a lack of enthusiasm from Israel's traditional support base, Brown has since turned closer to home. He's hoping his own evangelical Christian community in the U.S., some 70 million of whom "love Israel and love God," will come to support a project that could ostensibly restore Israel to her days of Biblical glory.

It's hard to estimate the support Zion has reached from the evangelical community since its public offering in February, but the company has already received backing from Christian luminary Hal Lindsey, a well-known evangelical public personality, and author of "The Late Great Planet Earth," which has an estimated 35 million copies in print worldwide.

"I'm interested in anything that will help Israel in its development," Lindsey told Anglo File earlier this week from his home in California. "My interest isn't in finding oil; my interest is in finding oil in Israel." Like other apocalyptic Christians, Lindsey believes Israel will have amassed an enormous amount of wealth before the second coming of Christ. "Israel has achieved an agricultural miracle in the land, as predicted. She also has developed a world class high-tech industry. But none of these have brought the kind of wealth that is forecast by the Bible," he writes on his Web site. "The one source of this kind of wealth that would achieve the conditions of the prophecies is OIL ... A major oil discovery would provide the great wealth that is demanded by the prophecy of Ezekiel [and] change the entire balance of power in the Middle East and the world."

Lindsey hasn't yet purchased stock in Zion, but says he hopes to. He mentioned the Zion project on his weekly Trinity Broadcasting Network news program, which reaches some 2 million households worldwide, and is hoping that other devout Christians have begun to take notice of the project. "Putting together a company based on faith is nothing short of miraculous," he added.

Zion, in the meantime, has already drafted plans in the event that they do stumble upon large reservoirs of oil. Brown has pledged some 6 percent of gross revenue to social and economic programs in Israel and the U.S. Donating the money to charity, after all, was only natural; it says so in the Bible.

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