North Sea, West Bank.
Britain is about to decide whether to open its largest untapped oil field. One of the companies that would profit is controlled by an Israeli conglomerate on a UN list over West Bank settlements — the same kind of company the UK government just announced it would sanction.
This is a clean, documented conflict, and we build it on the BBC, The Ferret, and the Middle East Eye — not on vibes. It is also a story where the line between evidence and insinuation matters a great deal, so we draw that line on the page: what's a contradiction, and what's a six-degrees chain we refuse to run.
What this page is about
Rosebank, off Shetland, is Britain's largest untapped oil field. A 20 percent stake in it is held by Ithaca Energy, an Aberdeen-based, London-listed FTSE 100 company — which is controlled by its largest shareholder, the Israeli energy conglomerate Delek Group. Delek has been included since 2020 on the United Nations database of companies whose activities in the occupied West Bank raise “particular human rights concerns,” for providing services to settlements and using West Bank natural resources commercially. Delek disputes the listing, says it no longer has settlement involvement, and intends to challenge it — and we carry that in full.
Here is the documented tension, reported by the BBC. Last month the UK government, through Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, announced sanctions against companies and individuals that provide services or infrastructure to Israeli settlement expansion, plus a ban on settlement goods. Within weeks, the government — now led by Prime Minister Andy Burnham, with the Rosebank decision sitting on Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh's desk — must decide whether to approve a field that would send profit to a company the UN has flagged over those very settlements. Campaigners, including Greenpeace, Uplift, and the Green Party leader, have formally asked the government to confirm whether Delek will be “caught” by its own new sanctions, or explain why not.
That contradiction — sanction the settlement-linked firms with one hand, enrich one with the other — is the real story, and it is solid. We also want to be explicit about what this page does not do. Activist threads on this subject chain the oil money to Labour donors, to a researcher, to the Technion, to an arms firm, and present the web as proof the government is captured. We decline that chain, and we explain why in §2: it is the guilt-by-association move we refuse everywhere, and refuse especially here, because this site keeps the line between documenting a state's commercial footprint and the cabal canard sharp on purpose.
Books that go deeper on this story. Links are Amazon affiliate searches — buying through them supports the work at no cost to you.
The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Step through it here, or present it fullscreen.
North Sea, West Bank.
Britain is about to decide whether to open its largest untapped oil field. One company that would profit is controlled by an Israeli conglomerate on a UN list over West Bank settlements — the same kind of company the UK just announced it would sanction.
The money, the list, and the contradiction
An Israeli conglomerate, Delek Group, controls the company holding 20% of Rosebank — and stakes in 6 of the UK's 10 biggest fields.
FACTThis is the documented backbone. Ithaca Energy, the Aberdeen-based, London-listed FTSE 100 oil and gas producer, is controlled by its largest shareholder, the Israeli energy conglomerate Delek Group, which has been Ithaca's controlling shareholder since a 2017 takeover. Ithaca holds a 20 percent stake in the Rosebank field off Shetland, owns 100 percent of the Cambo field, and says it holds stakes in six of the UK's ten largest oil and gas fields. Delek has described Ithaca's North Sea operations as a 'growth engine' for its wider business. The ownership chain — North Sea oil, UK company, Israeli parent — is simply a matter of public corporate record.
Ithaca has paid more than $1 billion in dividends to Delek since 2020 — North Sea oil money flowing to the Israeli parent.
FACTThe Ferret's analysis of company filings found that Ithaca Energy has paid over $1 billion in dividends to Delek Group since 2020, with the payouts accelerating as Ithaca expanded its UK fossil-fuel holdings: $569 million across 2024 and 2025, and a further $101 million distributed in April 2026. This is the concrete stake in the Rosebank decision — the field's approval would extend and enlarge a revenue stream that has already sent more than a billion dollars from British waters to an Israeli conglomerate. We grade the dividend figure FACT on The Ferret's documented analysis; it is the reason the corporate ownership is not a trivia point but the heart of the matter.
Delek is on the UN database of companies tied to West Bank settlements — a listing it disputes.
FACTSince 2020, Delek Group has been named on the United Nations (OHCHR) database of companies whose activities in the occupied West Bank raise 'particular human rights concerns,' and it remained on the updated versions published in 2023 and 2025. Per the UN, it was included for providing services and utilities supporting the maintenance of settlements and using West Bank natural resources for business purposes; settlements are widely regarded as illegal under international law, a view reaffirmed by the International Court of Justice. Two careful fences. First, the UN database is not itself a sanctions 'blacklist' — it is a factual listing, though it is often called one. Second, Delek disputes its inclusion: a company spokesman told the Daily Telegraph that Delek no longer has any involvement in settlements, was 'wrongly included,' and intends to formally challenge the listing and seek removal. We grade FACT that Delek is on the list and that it contests it; we take no position on the merits of its challenge.
The contradiction: the UK just announced settlement sanctions — and is weighing a field that would profit a UN-flagged settlement-linked firm.
FACTThis is the story, and it is the government's own policy colliding with itself. Last month, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced UK sanctions against companies and individuals that provide services or infrastructure to Israeli settlement expansion, plus a ban on imports of settlement goods. Within weeks, the government must decide whether to approve Rosebank — a decision that would benefit Delek, a company the UN has flagged over exactly that kind of settlement activity. Campaigners from Greenpeace, Stop Rosebank, and Uplift, along with Green Party leader Zack Polanski, have written to Burnham and Miliband asking them to 'confirm, unequivocally, whether Delek will be caught by the new planned measures,' and if not, to explain how that is consistent with the stated intent to sanction those who finance or facilitate illegal settlements. We grade the contradiction FACT. Ithaca, for its part, says it is a FTSE 100 company 'governed by the highest standards of corporate governance,' a major North Sea investor, and a significant contributor to the UK Treasury, and we carry that.
The decision sits with Burnham's government — which leans toward more drilling, under pressure from more than one direction.
FACTThe Rosebank approval, previously granted by the Conservatives in 2023 and then quashed in court after a legal challenge by the campaign group Uplift, now rests with Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh, and is widely read as a signal of Prime Minister Andy Burnham's broader energy stance. Burnham has spoken repeatedly of a 'flexible' approach and is believed to favor more drilling where North Sea licenses already exist. The cross-pressures are real and documented: environmental and legal challenges on one side; on the other, an industry warning that blocking new fields deters investment, and a US president, Donald Trump, who has pushed successive UK prime ministers to drill more. We grade FACT that the decision is live, that it sits with Burnham's government, and that these pressures exist. What we do not do is convert 'Burnham favors drilling' plus 'a donor gave him money' into 'Burnham is controlled' — see the next block.
Where we stop: the donor web and the Technion chain are guilt-by-association, and we refuse them.
FACTThis block is the fence, stated as a claim in its own right, because the discipline is the point. Activist threads on this story extend it well past the oil: they note that Burnham and his ministers received donations from the Labour megadonor Gary Lubner (a £25,000 contribution to Burnham's leadership bid is in the public register) and other wealthy donors, that one minister's donor once collaborated with a researcher at Israel's Technion, that the Technion has ties to the arms firm Elbit, and they present the whole web as evidence the government is captured by Israeli interests. We decline to run that chain, and here is why, plainly. A British political donor's domestic giving is a UK political-finance matter — the same donor-class influence we criticize across this site regardless of anyone's ethnicity or religion — and treating a British Jewish businessman's Labour donations as 'Israeli influence' is precisely the slide from evidence to the cabal canard that we document and refuse in The Oldest Lies. And a chain of the form 'donor knew a researcher who worked at an institution with ties to an arms firm' is six degrees of separation, not a finding. The Delek–Rosebank contradiction is strong because every link is a hard, cited fact about named companies and a named policy. The donor-and-Technion web is weak because it substitutes association for evidence. We keep the first and drop the second on purpose.
Two ways to read a pipeline of money
The Delek–Rosebank story sits at the intersection of two things this site tracks constantly: the global flow of fossil-fuel money, and the gap between what governments say about Israeli settlements and what they do. On the first, Rosebank is part of the larger fight over whether Britain opens new North Sea fields at all — a fight that already produced the court ruling, won by the campaign group Uplift, that quashed the Conservatives' 2023 approval and forced a fresh decision. On the second, the United Kingdom has edged, under successive governments, from rhetorical disapproval of settlements toward actual sanctions on the companies that service them. Rosebank is where those two threads knot: a new fossil-fuel approval that would also route profit to a firm the UN has flagged over settlements, tested against sanctions the same government just announced.
That is a genuine policy contradiction, and it does not require a conspiracy to be damning. A government can be perfectly sincere about sanctioning settlement-linked firms and still approve Rosebank — because the pressures pulling the other way (energy security, investment, a US president demanding more drilling, the sheer momentum of an already-licensed field) are powerful and ordinary. The interesting question is not whether a secret hand is steering the decision, but whether a stated principle survives contact with those pressures. That is the test Green Party leader Zack Polanski named when he called Rosebank “a test of whether Labour's proposed sanctions regime is fit for purpose.”
And it is precisely because the real story is strong that we are careful about the embellished one. This is a subject where a documented commercial and policy conflict can, with a few extra leaps, be inflated into a tale of a Jewish-Israeli hand secretly controlling a British government — and the moment it is, it stops being journalism and becomes the oldest lie, which we spent a whole hub refusing in The Oldest Lies. The honest version is sharper anyway. You do not need a cabal to explain why a government might approve a field that enriches a settlement-flagged company weeks after vowing to sanction such companies. You need only the ordinary gravity of oil money and the ordinary human tendency to let a profitable exception swallow a principle. Documenting that, by name and by number, is the work we do across Israeli Influence — and the reason we can be believed when we do.
A principle is only as real as the exception it survives
Sanctions on settlement-linked companies mean something only if they bind in the hard cases, and Rosebank is a hard case precisely because the money is large and the field is already licensed. If a government can announce that it will sanction firms financing or facilitating illegal settlements, and then approve a project that channels profit to a firm the UN has named over settlements, the sanctions were a gesture, not a policy. That is the stake, and it is entirely visible without any conspiracy: the question is simply whether the stated rule applies when applying it is expensive. The public is entitled to the government's answer to the campaigners' plain question — is Delek caught, or not, and if not, why not?
- Can a government sanction companies that finance illegal settlements and, in the same season, approve an oil field that sends profit to one the UN has flagged — and still claim the sanctions mean anything?
- More than $1 billion in North Sea dividends has already flowed to Delek since 2020. Rosebank would extend that stream for years. Whose question is it whether British oil revenue should finance a settlement-flagged firm — and why has the government not answered it?
- The honest story here needs no cabal — only oil money and a wobbling principle. Why do the loudest tellings reach for a hidden hand instead, and who is served when a strong, documented contradiction gets buried under a weak, insinuating one?
Questions worth taking seriously
Isn't singling out an Israeli company for owning a North Sea field just antisemitism?
No, and the distinction is exactly the one this site is built on. The issue isn't that Delek is Israeli; it's that Delek is on a UN database over West Bank settlements, and the UK government just announced sanctions on settlement-linked firms — so approving a field that profits Delek is a direct test of the government's own stated policy. That's a conduct-and-policy question about a named company, not an ethnic one. We'd write the identical story about a company of any nationality flagged by the UN over the same conduct while the government sanctioned that conduct. What we refuse — on this page, explicitly — is the opposite move: inflating a British donor's giving and a chain of academic links into a secret-Jewish-control narrative. Criticizing a settlement-linked firm's profits is fair; the cabal story is the canard.
Delek says it was wrongly listed and left the settlements. Doesn't that end it?
We carry Delek's denial prominently — it says it no longer has settlement involvement, was “wrongly included,” and will formally challenge the UN listing — and we don't prejudge that challenge. But it doesn't dissolve the contradiction in front of the government today. As of now, Delek remains on the UN database (included in 2020 and still on the 2023 and 2025 updates), and the UK's sanctions question has to be answered on the facts as they stand, not on the outcome of a challenge that hasn't happened. If Delek is removed from the list, the picture changes and we'll say so. Until then, the government is being asked to approve a field benefiting a currently-listed company weeks after vowing to sanction such companies, and that question is live regardless of how the dispute eventually resolves.
If you are named on this page
If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.
This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.
The record
- BBC News — Burnham warned Rosebank oil field could breach West Bank sanctions (Delek, Ithaca, the campaigners' letter, Ithaca & Delek responses)
- The Ferret — $1bn and counting: the dividends to Delek, the UN database, the six-of-ten fields
- Middle East Eye — North Sea oil fields set to be reopened by Burnham would profit a UN-listed Israeli company
- BBC News — Burnham declares ~£345,000 in donations (the public political-finance register)
- Black Book Audit — The Oldest Lies (the line between documenting influence and the cabal canard)
- Black Book Audit — Israeli Influence on the United States (the standing lane)