ANDY Burnham has been urged to “blacklist” a company with links to illegal Israeli settlements from a license to drill in the North Sea by a former first minister after the Prime Minister announced sanctions last week.
Humza Yousaf has called on Burnham to ban Israeli Delek Group, a firm whose subsidiary Ithaca Energy owns a 20% stake in the Rosebank oil fields off Shetland.
Delek is listed on a UN “blacklist” of companies which have “directly and indirectly enabled, facilitated and profited from the construction and growth of the settlements”.
Uplift, a climate change pressure group, has estimated that, if approved, Rosebank could send more than £200 million to Delek through Ithaca Energy, which is headquartered in Aberdeen.
The former first minister of Scotland, Yousaf, said there has been “no clearer case of a company servicing illegal settlements than the Delek Group” and has urged the UK Government to take action and block Ithaca Energy from drilling in the North Sea.
Yousaf told the Daily Record: “This week I welcomed that the Foreign Secretary confirmed that official UK Government policy was to ban any trade with illegal settlements. This includes those who service and finance them.
“There could be no clearer case of a company servicing illegal settlements than the Delek Group, who have been accused by the UN of supplying the ‘provision of services and utilities supporting the maintenance and existence of settlements’.
“If the Foreign Secretary’s words are to mean anything, then the Delek Group, and their subsidiaries, should be blacklisted from operating in the UK.”
He added: “Illegal settlements and those who service them like the Delek Group cannot be allowed to profit from Scotland’s natural resources, and this is just another reason Rosebank should not be given the green light.”
Since 2020, Ithaca Energy has funnelled £1 billion in dividends to Delek Group, its largest shareholder.
Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced earlier this month a ban on imported goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
He also announced a ban on UK companies providing services such as “construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate” for the expansion of settlements.
However, he stopped short of announcing a full arms embargo, but did announce that weapon sales licences already banned under the current regime would be refused if the UK Government believed they would be involved in settlement expansion.
In what has been hailed as a substantial and “overdue” shift in the UK Government’s position, the Foreign Secretary also announced that Britain would recognise the occupation of Palestine as unlawful.
But climate campaigners fighting the Rosebank development have said that the potential field’s links with Israeli settlements add to the reasons it should be rejected by the UK Government.
A consultation on whether the field should be given the go-ahead closed last month, and a decision from ministers is expected in the future
Delek operates fuel and service stations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, part of Palestine, as well as the Golan Heights, which has been annexed from Syria and “provides services and utilities to support the maintenance of Israeli settlements”.
All three territories are considered occupied under international law, with Israeli settlements in those territories also considered illegal.
