North Sea oil fields set to be reopened by Burnham would profit blacklisted Israeli company
Campaigners say reopening North Sea oil and gas fields in the UK would be in breach of international law over a stakeholder company’s links to illegal West Bank settlements.
Reports suggest that new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham is set to “move quickly” to green light more oil and gas drilling as one of his first moves since taking office last week, despite concerns some of the profits would flow to a company blacklisted by the UN.
The two oil and gas fields in question are Rosebank, off Shetland in the North Atlantic, and Jackdaw in the North Sea coast of Scotland, which were approved by the previous Conservative government in 2022 and 2023, but then overturned in 2025 after a legal challenge.
Delek Group, an Israeli energy conglomerate, is the majority shareholder of Ithaca Energy, which owns 20 percent of Rosebank.
The UN human rights commissioner lists Delek on a database of firms whose activities in facilitating illegal West Bank settlements raise “particular human rights concerns”.
Delek also holds a contract worth hundreds of millions of pounds to provide fuel for the Israeli military whilst it commits genocide in Gaza.
Analysis from an investigation by The Ferret showed that Delek has already raked in over $1bn in dividends from Ithaca’s stake in six of the UK’s ten largest oil and gas fields since 2020, and would be set to receive over £200m more if Rosebank is approved.
Karla McLaren, Amnesty International UK’s government and political relations manager, told Middle East Eye that “it would totally fly in the face of the UK’s international legal responsibilities for the UK to be granting concessions or contracting with any company that has enabled, facilitated or profited from the construction of Israel’s settlements, which are war crimes.”
The decision also comes amid record heatwaves in Europe, and follows a joint intelligence report that was suppressed by the government in 2025 showing that the UK faces a severe national security threat from the climate crisis.
Drill baby drill
The move was welcomed by US President Donald Trump, who wrote in a post to Truth Social that Burnham’s decision to open up the North Sea oil fields would turn the UK “from a Poverty Stricken Disaster, to one of the Richest Countries anywhere in the World!”
Trump was critical of Starmer’s reluctance to reopen the fields, saying in an interview with The Telegraph in April that “all Starmer wants is costly windmills that are driving your energy prices through the roof” and called on him to “drill baby drill”.
The decision had been blocked by former Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, but he faced mounting pressure to approve it when he was removed from the position and appointed to foreign secretary in Burnham’s cabinet reshuffle.
The White House said it was “deeply concerned” by the appointment of Miliband, who Trump had previously accused of “net zero zealotry”.
One of the first things Burnham did when he took office on 20 July was to call Trump to assure him that securing shipping in the Strait of Hormuz was “at the top of his agenda” and two days later approved the continued use of UK bases for US strikes on Iran.
“How Andy Burnham responds to this pressure will be one of the defining tests of his premiership,” Rudy Schulkind, political campaigner at Greenpeace UK, told MEE.
“Caving to demands from Donald Trump and the fossil fuel lobby by backing Rosebank would signal that powerful corporate interests still hold more sway than the public interest - it would also undermine the UK's climate commitments and contradict Burnham's own pledge to uphold international law in Palestine, given Rosebank's links to Israeli energy company Delek."
‘Actions speak louder than words’
Earlier this month, Burnham issued an apology for Labour’s “initial response” in its approach to Gaza, claiming “we need to do better”.
Previous party leader Keir Starmer received widespread criticism for saying in October 2023 that Israel “has the right” to cut off water and electricity from Gaza – a method of collective punishment which is illegal under international law.
'A lot of our political class are bought by the oil and gas lobby'
- Patrick Galey, Global Witness
Starmer avoided calling for a ceasefire when Israel began its most aggressive onslaught on the territory after 7 October, while Burnham, who was the mayor of Manchester at the time, joined mayor of London Sadiq Khan to go against their party leader and call for a ceasefire.
But while Burnham acknowledged the “unbearable suffering” in Gaza as “a scar on our collective conscience,” he fell short of calling it a genocide, saying that it is “for the international courts to determine”.
The move, intended to signal a shift in the government’s attitude on the Palestine issue, comes after a study revealed that Gaza factored into the decision of over half of former Labour voters who moved to a centre or left-wing party.
Patrick Galey, head of investigations at climate charity Global Witness, told MEE that Burnham seems to think the issues that brought down Starmer “can be fixed with a comms intervention”, but “actions speak louder than words”.
Galey explained that many in the government consider opening up the North Sea as a “bone to throw the oil and gas industry” - which he says tracks with a party that believes such interests “can be appeased, and will stop once their demands are met”.
In 2024, investigative platform DeSmog revealed that major oil and gas firms are represented by lobbyists that have given more than £300,000 in donations to Labour. The opposition Conservative Party received 40 percent of its donations from fossil fuel interests in the first week of its 2024 election campaign.
Global Witness's Galey added that “a lot of our political class are bought by the oil and gas lobby” and therefore their “understanding of climate change is filtered by their proximity to fossil fuel lobbyists,” which explains why Burnham is still talking about growth as his number one priority while large parts of France and Spain are currently burning down.
Stella Swain, the youth and student officer of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) told MEE that the move would make a "mockery" of Burnham’s recent apology for Labour's previous stance on Gaza, while Mothin Ali, the deputy leader of the Green Party, reiterated to MEE that “Burnham's half-baked apology for Labour's complicity in the genocide in Gaza is meaningless if he refuses to back it up with concrete actions.”
Profiting from destruction
Although the decision to reopen the oil fields has been framed as a means of alleviating the cost of living crisis and maintaining national energy security amid a global shortage caused by the Iran war, Galey said that the only people profiting from the decision will be “foreign companies and their shareholders”.
Because the oil and gas produced is sold on the international market, Galey explained that what sets the price is “things like whether Donald Trump wants to pursue a biblically promised war in the Middle East ” – which the UK is aiding and abetting through the use of its bases.
Since Brexit, Galey explained, the UK has become much more dependent on the US for energy imports; meanwhile, Spain’s investment in home-grown, renewable energy has bought them “political freedom” and allowed Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to stand up to Trump on Palestine and Iran because their independence means “you don’t need to pander to the whims of the mob boss in the White House”.
Galey said that fossil fuel giants “want to paint geopolitical situations such as conflicts as a force majeure, which necessitates special treatment for oil and gas because we use them as our energy,” when in reality these crises are “a feature of a fossil fuel- reliant system, not bugs”.
Lauren MacDonald, lead campaigner at Stop Rosebank group, told MEE that greenlighting the oil field “would be a morally reprehensible decision that turns a blind eye to the fact that the project could bolster Delek’s activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories - which the UN flagged for human rights violations.
“The UK government is well aware of these risks, and has even been warned that it could breach its own obligations under international law if it allows the field to go ahead."
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said it could not comment on individual projects and coule not "prejudice future decision-making".
Delek Group and Ithaca Energy did not respond to Middle East Eye's request for comment.