Tel Aviv — The leader of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah organization has threatened to use missiles against the Haifa Chemicals ammonia storage facility and wreak havoc in northern Israel in the event of a war. Hassan Nasrallah said Feb. 16 that the impact of firing missiles at the ammonia tank in Haifa would be equivalent to a nuclear bomb. He cited an Israeli expert as saying that an attack on the ammonia plant could kill tens of thousands of people in the region. Nasrallah said that the residents of Haifa are worried about the plant with or without a war. The Israeli government approved plans to shut down the facility, which has a storage capacity of 12,000 mt of ammonia, back in 2013, and open an ammonia production plant in southern Israel that would use domestic natural gas (GM Jan. 29, p. 15). Israel’s Environmental Protection Ministry said in response to the Hezbollah threats that it would issue a final tender for the project by the end of March. Industry sources said that the tender has been delayed in recent months over concerns about the economic viability of the project, which would be based on domestic natural gas from the Tamar offshore field. The sources said that domestic gas prices are currently too high at a time when global ammonia prices are falling. Even if all of the outstanding issues are resolved in the coming weeks, the southern Israel project will not be up and running before 2019.
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