The giant American Noble Energy US oil and gas producer has been inside the eye of a formidable public storm in Israel this year. This storm has recently shown threatening signs of mutating into an extensive social-justice protest movement, similar to the one that swept the streets of Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011.
Noble is the main partner in the large discoveries of natural gas found off Israel’s shores in recent years, in the form of the massive gas fields called Leviathan (2010) and Tamar (2009). Together with its Israeli Delek Drilling partner, Noble has a monopoly on the natural gas domain and the supply of energy to the Israeli market; this angers many social-justice organizations and important media and public personages. The government, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been trying for a long time to launch the ''natural gas outline'' with these two companies included. This outline agreement would determine the export quota that the state would allow from these reservoirs, the framework of future prices and a time schedule for the development of the reservoirs.
