Crowd demonstrates in Tel Aviv against government’s plan to let a American-Israeli energy group keep control of most of the country’s natural gas deposits.
Thousands of protestors demonstrated on Saturday evening in Tel Aviv against the government’s plan to let a American-Israeli energy group keep control of most of the country’s natural gas deposits.
Dr. Yossi Langotsky, who initiated the drilling, used sharp words. “The point we’ve gotten to is shameful,” he said. “The Israeli government is guiltiest of all. I understand the gas companies that want to profit, but it comes at the expense of the public. The antitrust regulator resigned for a reason. The Israeli government is robbing the public.”
MK Professor Yossi Yona of the Zionist Union added that the debate over the deal appeared to be taking place behind closed doors. “The current plan does not serve the public interest,” he said. “The current plan concentrates economic power in the hands of interested parties, among them foreign bodies, which means a strategic threat to Israel’s sovereignty.”
“There is a tremendous civil protest here,” said Mor Gilboa, director of the Green Course environmental organization and one of the protest’s organizers. “The apparent plan leaves us with exaggerated and outrageous natural gas prices that will not contribute to lowering the cost of living, to development of a strong local industry, to development of industry in the periphery, to reducing pollution. The gas robbery led by Netanyahu, with Kahlon’s silence, shall not pass.”
The government approved the plan on Thursday in a decision set to end months of uncertainty and will likely to be welcomed by Texas-based Noble Energy and Israeli conglomerate Delek Group. Their control of two sizeable gas fields was put in doubt late last year when the anti-trust regulator branded them a monopoly.
Details of the agreement have yet to be made public, but industry sources have said Noble and Delek will be allowed to keep control of Leviathan, the world’s largest offshore gas discovery of the past decade.
“We are establishing a significantly more competitive market and putting in place mechanisms that will prevent price gouging,” Eugene Kandel, a top economic adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who led negotiations with Noble and Delek, said on Army Radio.
On Friday, Netanyahu wrote on Facebook that his government was “promoting a realistic solution that would bring natural gas to the Israeli market, not a populist solution. I do not intend to surrender to pressures – I am determined to implement the gas plan, which is backed by the majority of professional and objective experts, in order to add many resources to the Treasury that would allow us to improve the quality of life for each and every Israeli citizen.”
“I do not work for any tycoons,” Netanyahu stressed. “I am the prime minister of Israel and I work for you, for the security of Israel and the welfare of all of its citizens.”
“During the elections campaign I committed to acting to cut the cost of living. I am determined to do so using the many resources we will gain thanks to the gas plan. This plan breaks the monopoly and will bring in hundreds of millions of shekels in the coming decades for education, welfare, and health to all of the citizens of Israel,” he continued.
As reported by Ynetnews