After a year of globally coordinated protests, phone actions and worker engagement, Aberdeen-based Dana Petroleum and its South Korean parent company have walked away from a consortium formed to explore for gas in Palestinian waters. This is a major Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) win – and now the pressure turns to Murphy Oil, the US company replacing Dana, to work with Israel to pillage Palestinian gas.
The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC), Urgent Action by South Korean Civil Society in Solidarity with Palestine, and partners across the Palestine solidarity and climate justice movement today celebrate a hard-won victory. Dana Petroleum, the Aberdeen-headquartered subsidiary of the Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC), has withdrawn from an international consortium awarded licences by Israel in October 2023, just days after the start of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, to explore for natural gas within Palestinian waters.
Human rights organisations and lawyers have identified the project as laying the groundwork for the pillage of Palestinian offshore gas reserves, a crime under international law. Dana’s exit follows that of Italian energy giant Eni earlier this year, leaving the consortium scrambling to stay viable — and, for the second time, an international partner walking away. Clear proof that Israel’s isolation is intensifying.
No business as usual with apartheid and genocide
For SPSC’s Energy Apartheid campaign, which has pressed Dana since the licences were awarded, the news confirms what a year of demonstrations, phone actions, sit-ins and engagement with workers can achieve. Internal sources from across Dana and the Korean National Oil Corporation have confirmed that the campaign and associated protest actions played an important role in the company’s decision.
SPSC welcomes Dana’s exit from a partnership that had aimed to profit from Israel’s proposed pillage of Palestinian resources. However, it is shocking that a company based in Scotland, could act with such impunity for so long. Given the Scottish Government’s commitment to implement a package of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, it has done nothing to speak out or take action against Dana Petroleum. Despite the UK’s obligations under international law to prevent pillage from occupied territories, it too did nothing. It was people power, not political power that sent a clear message to Dana and the Korean National Oil Corporation: there can be no business as usual with apartheid and genocide.
Kate Whitaker, Head of Movement Building at Friends of the Earth Scotland, has framed the withdrawal as proof of the strength of the movement behind it: “In Italy, Scotland and South Korea thousands have refused to sit by and allow the pillaging of Palestinian resources. With ENI and Dana now withdrawing from the consortium, the reality is that the companies willing to be seen to be involved with toxic deals like this are dwindling. Right now, families in Gaza are living in tents and facing deadly flooding. Drainage systems are failing due to fuel being withheld by Israel. Meanwhile they are selling gas from Palestine’s Exclusive Economic Zone to fossil fuel companies looking to profit in the midst of these atrocities.”
A three-year pattern, and a lesson for corporations everywhere
For three years, Israel’s Ratio Energies has tried to get the consortium off the ground, only to watch its main partners withdraw one after another under powerful, strategic and intersectional campaigning from across the world. Juman Muhammad, International Campaigns Manager with the BDS movement, said the back-to-back exits show “the sheer scale of what grassroots pressure can achieve: BDS is truly unstoppable, and no corporation is too big to be forced to walk away from complicity in Israel’s crimes.”
“Murphy Oil should read the writing on the wall,” she added. “It is stepping into a project that two major international energy companies have already fled.” The BDS movement has warned investors, insurers, banks and contractors across Murphy Oil’s supply chain against enabling the project, and warned all corporations complicit in Israel’s crimes to end their complicity or face escalating BDS pressure, exclusion from contracts and investments, and possible criminal litigation.
In South Korea, where Dana’s parent company KNOC is publicly owned, campaigners have also spoken out following the withdrawal announcement. Bora Noon, of BDS Korea, said it was “deeply shameful” that a public Korean company was part of an illegal deal, given Korea’s own history of colonial occupation and theft, and called on President Lee Jae Myung, who has called Netanyahu a war criminal, to cut all ties between the Korean government and Israel, starting with the National Pension Service’s massive investment in Israeli stocks and bonds.
BDS Works: Get involved today!
SPSC calls on the people of Scotland to be inspired by this victory. We must now focus our efforts on pressuring the Scottish Government to make good on their commitment to BDS. Join the campaign to remove UN-blacklisted Constucciones y Auxillar de Ferrocarriles (CAF) from the companies shortlisted to provide ScotRail’s new suburban train fleet.
Action Network: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/caf-scotrail
More info on the CAF campaign here
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