While Israel is the model for liberty and democracy in the Mideast, it has no known oil reserves to speak of, making it an oddity in the world’s most oil-rich region. Many of its neighbors, on the other hand, abound in their vast oil wealth, which for decades they’ve used to prop up tyrannies and fuel hatred and terror.

Yet in one fell swoop, a recent geological find could change all this, positioning Israel as an exemplar of how political freedom can combine with the economic freedom oil provides.

Exploration in the Shfela basin, an area just southwest of Jerusalem, has uncovered oil shale deposits that are believed by some leading experts to hold the equivalent of at least 240 billion barrels of oil. In comparison, Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, has reserves containing 250 billion barrels. While production would be at least a decade away, the potential effects of this development cannot be underestimated.

It would at last free the world from the clutches of OPEC, the cartel comprised mostly of assorted Arab tyrannies, theocracies and totalitarian states that currently controls global oil prices. Since the 1970s, OPEC has used its power to blackmail the West into acceding to policies that undermine its own vital interests on many fronts and, with at least partial success, isolate Israel. OPEC members have also used billions of petrodollar profits to plant the seeds of an intolerant and supremacist Islamic ideology in mosques, schools and other institutions in the U.S. and elsewhere. These, in turn, have sprouted such poisonous fruit as the Taliban, Muslim Brotherhood and numerous other extremist Jihadist movements that threaten American interests and lives.

A large supply of Israeli oil outside of OPEC’s control would disrupt the cartel, reduce oil prices and OPEC’s profits, and consequently offer a powerful stimulus for the U.S. and global economy. It would simultaneously deprive Iran of the oil revenue they’ve used to support terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, suppress democratic movements at home and elsewhere, kill American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and develop their underground nuclear weapons program that threatens the entire free world.

The immense profit from oil sales would allow Israel to dramatically boost its already-prodigious scientific capabilities, which was integral in developing the modern computer chip, the Internet, telecommunications technology, drip irrigation and many other boons to humanity. The technology created by Israel for its oil retrieval will allow other nations with shale reserves to gain their own energy independence. Oil profits will generate extra funding for Israel’s cutting-edge defensive weapons industry, which recently developed the world’s first working anti-missile shield, a product that will likely benefit the entire civilized world.

Finally, this development demonstrates yet again that it is in America’s vital interest to ensure that Israel, the region’s only democracy, remains safe, secure, and strong – both militarily and economically – in a region of instability and enormous threats. For as technology entrepreneur George Gilder recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “We need Israel as much as it needs us.”