NOBLE-DELEK AND THE TZEMACH REPORT – ARE THE TWO CONSISTENT? IS THE PUBLIC PROTECTED FROM PRIVATE INTERESTED STAKEHOLDERS?
In 2013, the U.S. Commercial Service – Israel Department of Commerce in its No. 6 newsletter published a summary and findings of the Israeli Knesset, and a report entitled the “Tzemach Report.” The Tzemach Report was commissioned by a committee named after Shaul Zemach (Tzemach) who was an outspoken proponent of creating a clear and concise policy regarding Israel’s natural resources, in particular its mining of oil and gas and the corresponding export.
It should be noted that the report is spelled interchangeably between Zemach and Tzemach throughout. It should be further noted that Tzemach translated to English is a plant – something that grows.
Of significant concern in the creation of the committee were issues related to whether Noble Energy and Delek Group, Ltd. represented a cartel and violated antitrust rules in Israel, whether the costs associated with drilling and export and the environmental impact outweighed the benefits to the people, whether private ownership of the wells, the drilling rights and ultimately the assets exported would benefit the public at large or simply the private stakeholders.
The Committee was created to fashion a set of protocols which would determine things like: the amount exports permitted, what constituted an arms’ length transaction in the gas/oil mining industry, whether the Israeli people would benefit from exports, prices, taxation, competing interests, and a number of other guidelines.
We have posted for your review 20 of 25 of the pages of the U.S. Commercial Service’s Newsletter. The link for the remainder of the Newsletter can be found by clicking here. The importance of this report, the underlying articles used (most of which were reported in Globes at the time) as we see it relates to the current Noble-Delek deal on the table.
It is our firm belief that private stakeholders, many of whom are wealthy US and non-Israeli investors, stand far more to gain than either the Israelis or the Egyptians who we think should be wary of the deal. We believe that the Tzemach Report outlined significant underlying concerns and the influence of the private stakeholders has paved the way for the governing bodies to ignore those concerns.
LOSTMESSIAH 