Recognition of Palestine as a state would put beyond doubt that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is entitled to develop the natural gas resources of the Gaza Marine field, according to one of the experts that worked on the stalled project.
Michael Barron, the author of a new book on Palestine’s untapped gas reserves, has suggested the field could generate $4bn (£3bn) in revenue at current prices and it is reasonable that the PA could receive $100m a year over 15 years.
He said the revenues “would not turn the Palestinians into the next Qataris or Singaporeans, but it would be their own revenue and not aid, on which the Palestinian economy remains dependent”.
Plans to develop the field have a near 30-year history, during which time legal controversies over ownership have stalled exploration.
A law firm representing Palestinian human rights groups sent a warning letter to the Italian state-owned firm ENI that it should not exploit the gas fields in an area known as Zone G, where six licences were awarded by Israel’s energy ministry.
In their letter, the lawyers claim that roughly 62% of the zone lies in maritime areas claimed by Palestine and, as such, “Israel cannot have validly awarded you any exploration rights and you cannot validly have acquired any such rights”.
Palestine declared its maritime borders, including its exclusive economic zone, when it acceded to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 2015, and set out a detailed claim in 2019. Israel is not a signatory to UNCLOS.
Barron said recognition of Palestine, particularly by states with large oil firms registered in their jurisdiction, would effectively end the legal ambiguity, and provide the PA with not only a new secure source of income, but regular supplies of energy independent of Israel.
Since the legal letter, ENI has told pressure groups in Italy that “licences have not yet been issued and no exploratory activities are in progress”.
Another group, Global Witness, claims the East Mediterranean Gas pipeline that runs parallel to the Gaza coastline is unlawful since it runs through Palestinian waters, and is not providing any revenue to the PA.
The 56-mile (90km) pipeline transports gas from Ashkelon in Israel to Arish in Egypt, where it is then processed into liquefied natural gas for export, including to Europe.
“The Oslo Accords agreed in 1993 clearly give the Palestinian National Authority jurisdiction over territorial waters, the subsoil, power to legislate over oil and gas exploration and to award licences to do so,” Barron said. “Control over natural resources was an important element of [the] state-building agenda of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Israeli exploitation of Palestinian resources was and remains a central part of the conflict.”
Gas was discovered in the Gaza Marine field in 2000 in a joint venture owned by the BG Gas group, a giant privatised off-shoot of British Gas and the Palestinian Consolidated Contractors Company. The plan was for the gas to be used by the sole power station on the Gaza strip to end the territory’s perennial energy shortages.
Barron argues in his book – The Gaza Marine Story - that the fate of the project is a microcosm of how Israel worked to increase Palestinian dependence on Israel while at the same time trying to separate Palestinians from Israelis.
The project was dogged by issues of commercial viability and an Israeli court ruling that the waters were a “no-man’s water”, partly because the PA was not a sovereign entity with unambiguous powers to award licences.
The court also did not resolve whether the rights to Palestinian territorial waters clearly provided for in the Oslo Accords included a Palestinian “exclusive economic zone”, a zone that normally extends 200 miles off the coast. The accords were only intended to be an interim arrangement before full statehood and so did not delineate the full maritime border.
Territorial waters are normally defined as only 12 or 20 miles off the coast and Israel always argued that any licence for Gaza Marine 20 miles off the Gaza coast should be seen as a gift to the PA by Israel, and not a right.
After Hamas took control the Gaza strip in 2007, Israel did not want the revenue to fall into its hands, so it blocked the development, prompting the BG group to put the project on hold and then eventually to quit. In June 2023 Israel approved plans for an Egyptian firm EGAS to develop the field, only for the war in Gaza to start.
Gaza Marine is estimated to contain only 30 billion cubic metres (BCM) of natural gas, which is a small fraction of the more than 1,000 BCM contained in Israel’s own territorial waters.
Barron argued that Israel has its own gas supplies and so long as a Palestinian state with unified governance is recognised, Israel will have no motive or legal right to block Palestine exploiting its single greatest natural resource.
The whole controversy around private sector investment in Israel’s acknowledged occupation of Palestine moved centre stage with a report published last week by the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, warning corporations against sustaining what has been declared an unlawful occupation by the international court of justice (ICJ).
She claims ICJ decisions place on corporate entities a prima facie responsibility “to not engage and/or to withdraw totally and unconditionally from any associated dealings with Israel, and to ensure that any engagement with Palestinians enables their self-determination”. Her claim has been rejected wholesale by Israel.
