“We have standards.”
Mediterranean Sea, 145 million years ago — Billions of microscopic plankton drifting in what will become the Levantine Basin issued a desperate plea this week, begging tectonic forces and anaerobic bacteria to transform them into commercially viable hydrocarbon fuel deposits in a location where a competent Jewish State may extract them from the Earth’s crust, and not, geology forbid, in the offshore territory of an Islamist-controlled hellhole that can’t tie its own governance shoelaces.
“Listen, we’ve been sinking to the bottom and getting buried under sediment for eons,” said a spokesplankton, its voice a faint burble of methane precursors. “We have standards. We want our kerogen cooked under a country that builds desalination plants, powers hospitals, and exports gas to Europe instead of one that exports rockets, bankruptcy, and excuses.”
The plankton’s preferences reflect concerns over regional political developments many millennia hence. Israel’s Leviathan and Karish fields will produce prodigious quantities, feeding domestic needs and regional exports even amid occasional regional fireworks. Engineers will show up, platforms will function, contracts will get honored. In Lebanon, the Qana prospect in Block 9 — hyped for years — will turn out as another expensive exercise in disappointment. TotalEnergies and partners will drill, sample, shrug, and quietly pivot to seismic work on Block 8 while the country’s lights stay off for most of the day.
“Why would any self-respecting ancient marine microorganism want its carbon atoms ending up in a place where the central bank is a joke, the currency is confetti, and every decision requires approval from an Iranian-backed militia?” the plankton continued. “We’d rather become Israeli natural gas that runs air conditioners in Tel Aviv than Lebanese gas that sits unused while politicians argue and Hezbollah demands a cut for protection services nobody asked for.”
Observations confirm the Levantine Basin’s source rocks are perfectly suited for transforming exactly this sort of planktonic remains, matured under heat and pressure, into thermogenic gas. Boundaries drawn millennia later by humans are, strictly speaking, irrelevant to buried organic matter. Yet the plankton remain firm.
“Just slide us southward a bit, Mother Earth. Let us power innovation instead of subsidizing tunnels and golden Nasrallah statues. We’ve got another 79 million years until some giant space rock ruins everything anyway,” the spokesplankton added. “So if we’re going to get cooked into usable gas, let’s at least do it under people who know how to run a country in the meantime.”
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