State revenues from natural gas reservoirs and royalties reached NIS 864 million in 2019

State revenues from natural gas reservoirs and royalties reached NIS 864 million in 2019, according to the Director of Natural Resources at the Ministry of Energy. The main part of the revenue comes from natural gas and oil royalties, which amounted to NIS 842 million, of which NIS 836 million was from the Tamar gas reservoir. This is a decrease of 2.5% compared to 2018, and the Ministry of Energy explains this decline in the dollar exchange rate in 2019 by about 7.79%, as a result of a temporary reduction in production due to handling of the Tamar rig in April. The aggregate revenues from Tamar's strong royalties from the start of production in 2013 to the present date amount to NIS 5.18 billion.
Additional smaller sums were transferred to the state by the franchisees Megad (World Hills) and Yam Thetis, who each transferred NIS 2.7 million. Whale reservoir owners, who began selling natural gas to the economy just days before the end of 2019, paid NIS 327,000.
State revenues from quarrying royalties reached NIS 10.7 million in 2019 and another NIS 5.6 million was received from Fees. The auction for distributing marine gas licenses yielded NIS 5.9 million to the state coffers: NIS 1.4 million was collected by the state for information packages sold to companies interested in the competition process documents and an additional NIS 4.5 million was paid as a signature grant by the winning companies. As a result of the whale's entry, the Ministry of Energy anticipates a significant increase in royalty revenue in 2020 to a new record of NIS 1.5 billion.