Nofar Energy CEO Warns Israel's Gas Reserves Could Deplete by 2040 Amid AI Boom
Nofar Energy CEO Ofer Yanai warned that Israel's natural gas reserves could run out by 2040 due to surging AI energy demands, criticizing the lack of renewable progress and infrastructure planning.
Ofer Yanai, CEO and controlling shareholder of Nofar Energy, delivered a sharp critique of Israel's energy strategy during an appearance on the Institute of CPAs' "Opening an Account" podcast, hosted by Institute President Chen Schreiber.
According to Yanai, Israel is not an energy superpower. "We got lucky, and we need to thank two people — Gideon Tadmor, the father of the gas economy, and Yitzhak Tshuva," Yanai stated. "Relatively cheap gas reserves were discovered, but in terms of renewable energy, Israel should be in a much more advanced place, and it easily could be with a bit of flexibility and creativity."
Energy Reserves and the AI Threat
Yanai raised concerns about the depletion of Israel's primary energy resources and the timeline for exhaustion.
How long will we be able to survive on the reservoir located 20 kilometers offshore? Today, company forecasts point to the year 2044, and that is assuming the reservoirs are utilized at 100 percent. But what if they are utilized at only 80 percent? They will run out by 2040, which is tomorrow morning. All this even before AI accelerates consumption rates.
He criticized the recent suspension of new connection requests for large server farms to the power grid, noting that approving such projects would have tripled Israel's energy consumption and exhausted natural gas reserves within five years instead of twenty.
Proposed Solutions and Bureaucratic Hurdles
To address the looming energy crisis, Yanai called for large-scale infrastructure investments, including massive gas pipelines, major LNG facilities, and nuclear energy, stressing that current efforts fall drastically short.
He also targeted governmental bureaucracy, pointing out that shifting political priorities hinder long-term strategic planning compared to the private sector. Furthermore, Yanai highlighted Nofar Energy's recent steps to address surging demand driven by artificial intelligence, including a deal to build Israel's first AI server farm with a 50-megawatt capacity—an energy consumption footprint equivalent to twice the size of Afula.
