Gas Pipeline
Gas PipelineReuters

This year's state financial report includes for the first time an estimate of Israel's rights to revenues from oil and gas discoveries. Amount: NIS 20.3 billion. The estimate, made by the office of the Accountant General at the Ministry of Finance, is based on proven oil and gas discoveries.

These include the well at the Tamar gas field in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, but do not include the more recent Leviathan drill site, since that well is not defined as a discovery.

Other natural resources cited in the financial report for 2011 included phosphates (worth NIS 270 million), potash (NIS 4.5 billion in royalty rights) and sand and gravel quarries (NIS 1.25 billion).

Another first in the report is an assessment of 16,000 dunam (4,000) of state land, valued at NIS 303.7 billion. About 75 percent of this is assessed as farmland, worth NIS 5.4 billion.

About 11.8 million dunam (2.95 million acres) of farmland or open space altogether is available in the country. Some 82,000 dunam (20,500 acres) of land is zoned for residential purposes, and is valued at NIS 115 billion.