The Establishment of the Delek Oil Company

Abstract

The dependence on foreign companies (especially British ones) which had been given legal expression in the 1953 Draft Agreement naturally influenced Israel’s search for an independent oil supply. It was forced to come to terms with the economic and political interests of these companies, due among other reasons, to several internal and external constraints on its freedom of action. This chapter will analyse how Israel coped with these difficulties from mid-1950 till the establishment of an independent national oil company two years later, which enabled initial, limited activity in the areas of import and marketing of oil and eventually laid the groundwork, as will be described in the subsequent chapters, for expanding Israel’s role in its own energy economy.