The Media Line: Expert Warns Haifa Refinery Is ‘Time Bomb’ Despite Limited Damage in Iranian Strike

Expert Warns Haifa Refinery Is ‘Time Bomb’ Despite Limited Damage in Iranian Strike

Near-miss at Bazan facility highlights risk of toxic gas release and growing criticism over government inaction and industrial concentration

By Gabriel Colodro/The Media Line

An Iranian missile strike near Israel’s largest oil refinery ended without a hazardous leak, but for Marcelo Sternberg, professor of climate change ecology at the School of Plant Sciences and Food Security at Tel Aviv University, the outcome should not be mistaken for reassurance. “It’s actually a time bomb,” he told The Media Line, warning that the real danger lies not only in what happened, but in what nearly did.

The Bazan refinery in Haifa Bay, which sits close to densely populated neighborhoods, has long been a source of environmental concern. The latest round of missile fire has now placed those concerns in a wartime context. Prof. Sternberg emphasized that, according to available information, “the damage was not major,” adding that “it’s actually very lucky that the main refinery of petrol in Israel was not very highly damaged.” But that sense of relief, he suggested, is fragile and temporary, particularly given the facility’s strategic importance.

What makes the situation particularly alarming, he explained, is not only the facility itself, but where it is located. “This type of oil refinery in a highly populated, dense area close to the city of Haifa,” he said, has been repeatedly criticized even before the war. “There have been a lot of claims before the war against the position of this refinery… because it’s located very close to highly populated neighborhoods.”

Beyond the immediate risk of a strike, Sternberg pointed to the refinery’s ongoing environmental impact. “The contamination is mainly air contamination, and the hazards that they are polluting daily from the oil refinery are very, very high,” he said, describing an already sensitive environment that could quickly deteriorate under direct attack. In his assessment, the uncertainty surrounding missile trajectories and interception outcomes only adds to the danger. “It’s like Russian roulette,” he said. “You don’t know exactly where the missile will fall and if the missiles will be able to fully repel the attack or not.”

The absence of a hazardous materials leak in this instance does not eliminate the underlying risk. On the contrary, Sternberg warned that a direct hit on critical refinery infrastructure could trigger far more severe consequences. “Definitely the damage and the potential of explosions that we see in other places where the refineries were attacked,” he said, could escalate rapidly. “Not only the fire, but the explosion and the release of heavy smoke and all the additional elements that are contained in that smoke are highly, highly toxic, and they can produce the death of people.”

The relatively limited number of casualties reported so far, he stressed, should be understood in that context. “Only one person was injured,” he said, but “it was very, very lucky that it did not happen in a wider case.” In other words, the incident reflects a near miss rather than a contained threat.

The risks are compounded by geography and regional dynamics. Haifa lies within range of multiple hostile actors, and Sternberg noted that “the situation is very, very risky,” particularly given the proximity of threats from the north. At the same time, public pressure to relocate the facility has been growing. “The general public, and even the mayor of Haifa,

is claiming … to move this plant to another place, south of Israel,” he said, referring to proposals to shift heavy industry to less populated areas such as the Negev.

For residents in the Haifa Bay area, the implications are immediate and potentially severe. Sternberg warned that in the event of a more significant strike, evacuation could become unavoidable. “If there is a major impact, definitely a vast part of the population will need to be evacuated,” he said, pointing to the danger posed by toxic gases released during explosions involving petroleum products and chemical byproducts. “This will lead to major movement of people being evacuated to major areas.”

Despite these concerns, Sternberg was sharply critical of what he described as a lack of political urgency. “This is something that people have been claiming a lot, but the government is not interested, unfortunately,” he said. “The issues about the environment are not on the agenda of this government.” In his view, the current situation reflects not only the pressures of war but also long-standing policy decisions that have left critical infrastructure exposed.

The implications extend beyond environmental risk into questions of national resilience. The Bazan refinery accounts for a dominant share of Israel’s refining capacity, making it central to the country’s fuel supply. Sternberg warned that any sustained disruption could have tangible effects. “It will definitely affect petrol,” he said, arguing that the country lacks sufficient long-term planning to mitigate such a scenario. “The government is looking only at the short term and not really planning for what may happen.”

He also pointed to the structural risks associated with concentrating so much capacity in a single location. “How can we make small areas or small distillation plants?” he suggested, is a question that has not been adequately addressed. The current model, he implied, creates a single point of failure under conditions where that vulnerability is increasingly being tested.

Sternberg’s criticism extended to broader governance and economic factors as well. “The priorities are not there,” he said, referring to environmental planning and risk mitigation. He also alluded to the influence of private interests, noting that the Bazan facility “has a very strong lobby of a family that is not only the owners of this petrochemical industry,” a concentration he suggested has contributed to the lack of structural change.

For now, the refinery continues to operate under the shadow of ongoing hostilities. But the margin between containment and catastrophe, Sternberg warned, may depend more on chance than on planning.