The falling prices this week indicates to me that the latest update is not what the investing-community as a whole was anticipating. I did a very cursory investigation on the typical implications of hitting water on one side of a non-porous layer in the hopes of finding significant oil on the deeper side. By no means am I an expert or even very knowledgeable about drilling for oil. However, it seems the articles I read implied this is not unusual. However, I could not find if it is a good or bad symptom of actually striking a large deposit past the impermeable layer. Furthermore, from the update it appears that ZionOil was not expecting the water layer and are finding it a significant obstacle to their goals.

Furthermore, my cursory investigation seemed indicate that a significant oil reserve would also typically be accompanied by natural gas. However, the update does not say anything about encountering natural gas.

My own internal reflections wonder, "What is so bad about finding water?" It sounds like it could be a significant water reservoir, which might be beneficial for a country in a very dry desert.

At any rate, I see that OPEC has just announced that they are cutting oil production over the pleadings of the Biden administration to ramp up production rather than cut it. OPEC officially stated that the goal is to make $90 per barrel the floor of the market. So it is expected that the price of gasoline will rise.

This, of course, does not hep Zion find oil, but if they should find sizeable quantities - Well you get the idea! However, it could easily make things even more tense in the Middle East as the OPEC nations would not welcome the "new guys" (i.e. Israel) having a say in oil prices.