A RIG carrying out exploratory drilling is hardly a rare sight in the Middle East; but this is no ordinary place. Israeli flags fly on it, though no other country in the world recognises Israel’s sovereignty over the area. A few miles to the east, jihadist rebel groups are fighting a bloody war. And few people ever expected that significant amounts of oil might lie there at all, under a dormant volcanic field. Welcome to the Golan Heights.

Israeli and American oilmen believe they have discovered a bonanza in this most inconvenient of sites. After three test-drillings, Yuval Bartov, the chief geologist of Genie Oil & Gas, a subsidiary of American-based Genie Energy, says his company thinks it has found an oil reservoir “with the potential of billions of barrels”.

Veterans of Israel’s energy sector are sceptical. Despite many optimistic starts, only two small oilfields in Israel have ever been commercially exploited. The indications are that the Golan field is of a different magnitude. But since there is little experience anywhere of drilling for oil under once-volcanically-active areas, it will take more comprehensive work to determine whether oil can be extracted profitably. And even then, big obstacles will remain.

This is not Genie’s first foray into Israel. In 2008 it launched an investment to extract shale oil in the Valley of Elah, in central Israel, but was forced to stop operations there in September 2014 when a coalition of environmentalists prevailed on planning authorities to withhold the necessary permits. This time the company has managed to get exploratory licences, despite opposition from green and local groups concerned that drilling could pollute the largely unspoilt Golan countryside and the Sea of Galilee below, the source of most of Israel’s drinking water. But many more legal and planning battles await.