The Natural Gas and Oil Department
The Natural Resources Administration (NRA) is the entity within the Ministry that regulates the exploitation of natural resources in Israel. It includes two professional units: The Natural Gas and Oil Department that manages oil and gas and The Mines and Quarries Unit that manages industrial minerals and ores. The department acts in accordance with the Petroleum Law and its various regulations and guidelines. Its functions include granting of petroleum rights and supervising the activities within these rights. The focus of the department is exploration and production of hydrocarbons while the Gas Authority and the Fuel Administration within the Ministry, regulate the transportation and distribution of gas and oil to the markets. The head of the department is the Petroleum Commissioner and it includes several departments; Engineering and Safety, Geology and Geophysics, Environment, Economics and Regulation .The department acts as a professional advisory body to the Minister of Energy and to various governmental units within and outside the Ministry in all matters related to the exploration and production of oil and natural gas.
One of the main activities of the Natural Gas and Oil Department is managing and archiving data and information submitted by the operating O&G companies, in accordance with the Petroleum Law. Such information includes all the scope of activities in petroleum rights such as seismic, log and other geophysical data, geological, drilling, engineering, and environmental data and reports, rock cuttings and core samples etc. These data are kept either within the Ministry or in two of its research facilities: The Geophysical Institute and the Geological Survey of Israel. Since early 2017 the department is in the process of creating a National Data Repository (NDR) for all its data types as well as for managing various regulatory activities. The NDR, being built around Schlumberger's ProSource E&P data delivery system, will become operational in early 2019 and will allow easy managing, querying and retrieval of data for both the ministry's staff and the public.