Winseer,

A few years ago the last time here in the states we were paying over $3 for gass I was siting in a bar at the Cleveland airport in Ohio talking to a guy from the UK. He said he could not feel sorry for us as he was paying $9 gas in the UK. Again, like you said, a big part was tax. Also said that was why most were driving around in little bitty cars to take advantage of the gas mileage.

Looks like a pretty good find of NG off the coast of Israel the other day. Already the gov't has indicated their enery taxes have been to low for to long and have to change and they are trying to best figure out how to tax the NG.

Other articles say it is much harder to export NG than oil and they will have difficulties exporting it and also there is competition with other contries that have NG such as Russia. However, it does give them some energy independence. Link include below.