Haifa’s Bazan oil refineries—which environmentalists and residents of the north have campaigned to shut down for decades—will cease operations in 2029, the head of the state directorate charged with rehabilitating the Haifa Bay pledged on Tuesday.

Yuval Admon concluded the annual conference of the Directorate for the Development of Haifa Bay, held at Haifa University, by saying that his team would be doing “very complex” work this year with the many government ministries and other state bodies involved, “to examine very seriously how we ensure that in 2029, the refineries close, and what stages will be needed for this to happen.”

In 2022, the cabinet voted to shut down the polluting refineries in the Haifa Bay and the oil storage complex in nearby Kiryat Haim.

The directorate, established soon afterward in the Prime Minister’s Office, set itself the goal of closing the complexes by 2029. However, its 2025 annual report, published in March, pushed this date back to 2031.

Admon now hopes solutions can be found to bring the closure forward again to 2029.

Budgets were not an issue, Admon told The Times of Israel, after the conference, adding, “governments just take time.”

Closing the petrochemical industry and cleaning and releasing the land it occupies for development is critical to transforming the bay area into an urban hub that rivals Tel Aviv and serves as an economic driver for the whole of northern Israel.

Plans envisage 130,000 new homes, a new hospital, walkable streets and bicycle paths, beaches, parkland, canals and clean, green........

© The Times of Israel