Subscriptions
Nafeez Ahmed looks at the evidence the current conflict not only suits extremists on both sides, but also hides a deal to monopolise natural resources
Control of Palestinian natural resources has increasingly become a defining feature of Israel’s relationship with the Occupied Territories. The worst spate of military violence in Gaza since 2014 is no exception.
The new evidence examined by Byline Times reveals that the latest hostilities broke out following an escalating dispute between Israel and Hamas over control of Gaza’s offshore gas reserves, which hit a wall just a month before the latest hostilities.
A UN report along with a US Army study published under the Obama administration further suggest that the Biden administration’s decision to go ahead with a $735 million arms sale to Israel is linked to US strategic interests in supporting Israel’s domination of East Mediterranean energy resources including gas potentially owned by Palestinians.
Palestinian Gas
Negotiations over Palestinian gas have sparked and stalled for over two decades since UK oil company BG Group discovered an estimated 1.6 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas in the Gaza Marine in 2000. But they accelerated again late last year after US oil giant Chevron purchased Houston oil firm Noble Energy, which was contracted by the Israeli government to develop its offshore oil and gas resources.
In 2017, Noble was accused of participating “in an act of pillage, in violation of international humanitarian and criminal law” by SOMO, a Dutch human rights organisation funded by the European Commission and Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. SOMO pointed to the company’s own annual report which confirmed that five years earlier Noble had begun unilaterally extracting gas from Israel’s Noa South field, which is contiguous with the Palestinian Border Field under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
At the time, I spoke to SOMO researcher Lydia de Leeuw who told me that BG Group maps confirmed that any extraction of gas from Noa clearly risked simultaneously extracting gas from Palestinian gas reserves.
“Noble did not take into consideration the occupied status of the Gaza Strip, nor the Palestinian sovereignty and self-determination of the Border Field and Gaza Marine,” she said. The following year, de Leeuw and another SOMO researcher were blocked from entering Israel and expelled from the country. Documents from the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs would later reveal that the researchers are no longer allowed into Israel due partly to their work for SOMO investigating companies in the Occupied Territories.
In partnership with Israeli energy firm Delek Group, Noble Energy has also extracted gas from other Palestinian resources, such as Mari-B, which could fall within 6,600 square kilometres of maritime territory potentially belonging to Palestine. Mari-B contained 1.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas – enough to supply Palestinians for at least 15 years. The gas extracted by Noble and Delek from Noa, Mari-B and the Palestinian Border Field has been sold to the state-run Israel Electric Company, which in turn sells electricity to Palestinians, and supplies Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Chevron’s purchase of Noble Energy in October 2020 therefore makes the American oil giant complicit in the potential ongoing theft of Palestinian gas, which has occurred with no objections from the PA.
Depriving Palestinians of their Own Resources
In 2019, a major United Nations study unreported until now concluded that “occupation continues to prevent Palestinians from developing their energy fields so as to exploit and benefit from such assets. As such, the Palestinian people have been denied the benefits of using this natural resource to finance socio-economic development and meet their need for energy. The accumulated losses are estimated in the billions of dollars.”
The report titled The Economic Costs of the Israeli Occupation for the Palestinian People: The Unrealized Oil and Natural Gas Potential was published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and authored by McMaster University economist Professor Atif Kubursi, who has been Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA) since 2006. The UNCTAD report warned that the rush to exploit Eastern Mediterranean gas resources when property rights have not been equitably allocated is depriving the Palestinians of a legitimate stake in the Levant basin’s resources in violation of international law.
Occupation has impoverished the Palestinian people, undermined their capacity to access and utilise their resources and denied them the right to move freely within their homelands
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development: The Economic Costs of the Israeli Occupation for the Palestinian People: The Unrealized Oil and Natural Gas Potential
Containing some 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas, the basin comprises “shared common resources, whose exploitation by any one party diminishes the share of neighbouring parties,” stated the UN report. The net value of these resources amounts to $524 billion, which should be distributed appropriately among the different parties, including Israel and Palestine: “These fields could be unitised, and their development could be undertaken on behalf of all parties, whose property rights should be ascertained prior to exploitation… Palestinians have a major stake not only in the fields under their land but in all of the common reserves.”
The report found that Palestinians have already lost roughly $2.57 billion due to Israel’s “prevention of the exercise of their right to benefit from the exploitation of their natural resources, guaranteed under international law. The longer Israel prevents Palestinians from exploiting their oil and natural gas reserves, the larger the opportunity costs of these reserves and the larger the costs of the occupation borne by Palestinians become.”
Contrary to conventional assumptions, the UN report concluded that Israeli efforts to separate Palestinians from access to their own land, natural resources and water have been central to the evolution of the conflict. The control of energy is part of a wider process whereby since 1967, “the Palestinian people have lost access to more than 60% of West Bank land and two-thirds of its grazing land. In Gaza, half of the cultivable area and 85% of fishery resources are inaccessible to producers.”
Israel has also extracted water above the level agreed under the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip and confiscated 82% of Palestinian groundwater for use inside Israel’s borders or in its settlements, forcing Palestinians to import over 50% of their water from Israel.
“Occupation has impoverished the Palestinian people, undermined their capacity to access and utilise their resources and denied them the right to move freely within their homelands to conduct normal economic and social transactions among themselves and with their neighbours and trading partners throughout the world,” concluded the UNCTAD report.
Byline Times asked Chevron to comment on its position on Noble’s actions, particularly now that Noble’s operations are now Chevron’s, and also on what appears to be Chevron’s complicity in Israel’s denial of Palestinian potential claims to other regional fields.
“Chevron is pleased to partner with the State of Israel, and we look forward to supporting the country’s strategy to develop its energy resources for the benefit of the country and the region,” said a Chevron spokesperson. “Chevron operates in compliance with local law and international standards and believes we have a responsibility to respect human rights and that we can play a positive role in the communities where we operate.”
Gas Scramble
By early 2021, a fresh round of talks had begun between Israel, the PA, Qatar and the EU on how to leverage Chevron’s involvement in longstanding Israeli ambitions to export Eastern Mediterranean gas to Europe.
These continued a revival of discussions under the Trump administration. In 2019, Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan and the PA launched the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF) to develop a regional hub that could export gas to Europe. The initiative was supported by Trump’s State Department, and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made sure to attend early meetings.
The plan, apparently backed by the Biden administration and involving US oil giant Chevron would in effect seal Palestinian energy dependence on Israel.
The Biden administration, however, has continued to spur on the revitalised discussions. In February 2021, officials from the Office of the Quartet, a diplomatic initiative on Israel-Palestine relations operating on behalf the United States, United Nations, EU and Russia, confirmed a new EMGF plan to export gas from Israel’s deepwater Leviathan field operated by Chevron through an existing pipeline into Israel, and from there into Gaza through a proposed new pipeline extension. Qatar would finance the Israel side of the proposed pipeline, while the EU would finance the section going into Gaza.
The plan culminated in a 21 February agreement between Israel and Egypt to connect Israel’s Chevron-run field to facilities in northern Egypt that export gas to Europe. These discussions included the prospect of developing Palestinian gas in the Gaza Marine field. On the same day, the PA and the state-owned Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS) signed a Memorandum of Understanding in Ramallah to develop the field. The PA’s Palestine Investment Fund declared that the arrangement would offer “a radical solution to the energy crisis afflicting the Gaza Strip”. An official Palestinian source revealed that the PA “had received positive signals from the Israeli side regarding the possibility of developing the Gaza Marine gas field, off the shores of the Gaza Strip in the Mediterranean.”
An official Quartet document I had obtained in 2015, however, suggests that the Gaza Marine development has been envisaged to export gas to Arab markets on behalf of Israel. The electric grid, the document said, should be upgraded to establish “interconnecting regional grids” which will involve the West Bank importing “electricity from Israel and Jordan,” while gas for the “Palestinian power sector” in Gaza can come from a “Leviathan deal with the Jenin Power Plant.” Meanwhile, Gaza Marine gas should be exported in the form of “gas sales” rather than domestic consumption. Palestinian gas would ideally be sold to Arab markets as a bridge between Israel and the Arab world, with the Gaza Marine seen not “as a competitor to Israel’s fields, but rather it [sic] provides a potential additional source of gas.”
The plan, apparently backed by the Biden administration and involving US oil giant Chevron would in effect seal Palestinian energy dependence on Israel.
The US approach is consistent with a strategic framework described in a December 2014 report published under the Obama administration by the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute. Although containing the usual disclaimer that the study does not officially represent the US Government, it acknowledged aiming to influence US policymakers.