Just days after the start-up of the country’s flagship 22tcf Leviathan field (MEES, 3 January), Israel is making further moves to shift its power generation towards gas and away from coal. The country’s National Planning and Building Board announced on 7 January that it has approved Israel Electric Corporation plans to build two gas-fired CCGT plants totaling over 1.2GW for mid-2022 completion at Hadera on the coast 40km north of Tel Aviv and 15km south of the Leviathan landing point of Dor.

The units will replace four 360MW coal-fired units totaling 1.44GW at IEC’s 2.59GW capacity Orot Rabin plant at Hadera. The two CCGT units would take 170mn cfd of gas, the equivalent of around 13% of Leviathan’s planned 1.2bn cfd, phase-1 capacity (MEES, 13 December 2019), but as yet no supply deal has been inked. (CONTINUED - 362 WORDS)