A temporary injunction was filed preventing the Noble Energy company from conducting “operations involving gas emissions” at the Leviathan gas field, according to Calcalist. The order was filed by Judge Eli Abarbanel at a district court in Jerusalem on Tuesday, as the judge froze the permit for gas emissions that had been granted to the company by the Environmental Protection Ministry. The decision to freeze the permit is temporary and a hearing will be held on Sunday to address a lawsuit filed by the municipalities of Zichron Yaakov, Jisr az-Zarqa, Megiddo, Pardes Hanna-Karkur and Emek Hefer, as well as the Zalul environmental NGO. Abarbanel wrote in his decision that the ministry and Nobel did not succeed in disproving the claim that the gas field would cause irreversible damage to public health if operations were not stopped. The judge’s order also prevents Noble from beginning the third stage of Leviathan’s operations, in which a poisonous amount of emissions that would usually only be permitted over a period of a year and four months or two and a half years would be emitted within a period of eight hours, according to the lawsuit. “The Leviathan partners have received the decision of the honorable court and are studying it, with readiness and intention to flow gas from Leviathan as soon as possible,” Texas-based Noble Energy and Israel’s Delek Drilling the partners behind the gas field said in a statement. Reuters contributed to this report.Source
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