Isaac Tshuva uses sugar packets on a table in the lounge of his Leonardo City Tower Hotel in Tel Aviv to mark the spots of three natural-gas fields off Israel that he said will fuel global growth of his energy business.

The Israeli billionaire, owner of New York�s Plaza Hotel, said his Delek Group Ltd. and partners including Houston-based Noble Energy Inc. are now homing in on more deposits after last year announcing a record find in waters off Haifa, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports in its April 26 edition.

�The amounts we�ve found are going to provide much of Israel�s energy needs for the next two decades,� said Tshuva, 61, who grew up in a one-bedroom apartment in Netanya with 10 family members after immigrating from Libya in 1948.

Tshuva is expanding his business and this year offered to buy BP Plc�s gasoline stations in France, adding to outlets in the U.S., Israel and Europe. The discovery has also helped as he tries to keep alive a $5 billion project to put a Plaza Hotel on the Las Vegas strip, which stalled as the U.S. real estate market slumped in the recession.

The find was �game-changing,� said Arie Tal, chief strategist at Alumot-Sprint Investment House Ltd., which holds Delek shares among about 1.5 billion shekels ($382 million) of assets. �It transformed Delek, a company that was possibly facing a tough time refinancing its debt, to a company that now holds an asset that will generate billions of dollars.�

(READ MORE: Bloomberg.com)