Petroleum Road

rdf:langString Petroleum Road

rdf:langString For the Saudi Road see: Trans-Arabian_Pipeline#Tapline_Road The Petroleum Road or Tapline Road (Hebrew: כביש הנפט, Kvish HaNeft) is a privately owned north–south asphalt road in the Golan Heights. It is 47 km (29 mi) long. It begins near Mount Peres on the east edge of the central Golan, and ends in the northern Golan near the Israeli-occupied Golan-Lebanese frontier, nearby Ghajar. Most of the road is marked on maps as inaccessible to traffic because of poor road quality. The name Petroleum Road derives from the now defunct oil pipeline of the Trans-Arabian Pipeline Company, which the road runs adjacent to. The Tapline, as it is abbreviated, originated in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, then proceeded through Jordan and Syria until reaching its oil export terminal in Sidon on the coast of Lebanon. Even though Israel came to control the section of the Tapline through the Golan after the 1967 Six-Day War it permitted its operation to continue. However, although it was the largest pipeline system in the world when it was completed in 1950, the Tapline had ceased all operations by 1990. The Golan Heights section stopped transporting petroleum in 1976. Since the road diagonally bisects the entire length of the northern portion of the Golan Heights, it was the site of many battles fought along its axis during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.