Sumar calls on Spain to reject Israeli oil drilling in Sahrawi waters

Eduardo González The Plurinational Parliamentary Group (Sumar) has asked the Government to comment on an agreement between Morocco and an Israeli company to extract oil resources in waters belonging to Western Sahara and near the Canary Islands. In a parliamentary question filed on March 6 and published this week in the Official Gazette of Congress, Sumar (a minority partner in Pedro Sánchez's government) points out that, last February, Morocco and the Israeli oil company NewMed signed an agreement for the exploration and exploitation of gas reserves off the coast of Western Sahara, in "waters very close to the Canary Islands." The agreement involves the awarding of 17 offshore permits for eight years, from south of Cape Bojador to Dakhla, in Sahrawi territory. Bojador, Sumar points out, is located "213 kilometers from the Maspalomas dunes and 215 kilometers from Fuerteventura." “The area of extraction and plundering of these natural resources by NewMed,” continues the group led by Vice President Yolanda Díaz, “is part of the territory that Morocco unilaterally appropriated in 2020, a “usurpation that has no legal validity because it is not recognized by the UN or any other international organization.” Specifically, Sumar is referring to an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) that Morocco occupied without notifying the United Nations. This EEZ, according to Coalición Canaria, belongs to Sahrawi territory, and its delimitation conflicts with the EEZ claimed by the Canary Islands. Furthermore, Sumar continues, the agreement between Rabat and NewMed contradicts a ruling by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) of October 4, 2024, which establishes that “any activity by any State, international organization, or company in Sahrawi waters must have the consent of the people of Western Sahara.” The group Yolanda Díaz also recalls that, on January 29, 2002, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs warned the UN Security Council that contracts for oil exploitation in Western Sahara "violated the principles of international law applicable to mineral resource activities in non-self-governing territories." "This is just one example of the colonial behavior employed by the Moroccan state in the occupied Sahara, occupying and exploiting the territory of the Sahrawi people," Sumar denounces. "These expansionist attitudes respond to a new geopolitical order with the arrival of Donald Trump to the White House and his plans to plunder natural resources in Ukraine in exchange for peace, and with the ethnic cleansing he seeks to carry out in Gaza," she adds. “Morocco is seeking recognition of Western Sahara as part of its territory with actions like these, seizing natural resources and appropriating a territory pending decolonization,” Sumar continues, also recalling that “the Spanish State remains the administering power of the territory of Western Sahara until the end of the decolonization period.” Therefore, Sumar asks the government “what is its opinion” of this “illegal agreement” to “illegally extract natural resources that belong to the Sahrawi people” and what measures it plans to take to “prevent this illegal plundering in the waters of Western Sahara.” It also asks “what is the government's opinion on the proximity to Canary Islands waters of the oil exploration that an Israeli company is going to carry out,” what it plans to do about it, and what measures it will take to “guarantee that no incidents will occur during these oil exploration operations that cause damage to the marine ecosystem near the Canary Islands.”

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