How small states break oil sanctions: Israel’s oil import strategy in the 1970s

ABSTRACTThis article argues that small oil-importing states are particularly adept at circumventing oil sanctions and leveraging them to further expand their own markets. It points to the unique advantages and necessary preconditions that make small states successful in their search for ‘sanctions busters’ in the global oil market, especially when approaching countries that recently became oil exporters. Using declassified Israeli, British and US archival material, this article sheds light on how Israel capitalized on the 1973 Arab oil embargo to gain access to Ecuador’s market through its oil sector, but failed to repeat this success in Norway and the United Kingdom.KEYWORDS: Oilsanctions bustingsmall statesIsraelembargo Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1 Nicholas Mulder, The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2022).2 UN Security Council, ‘SC/13141 – Security Council Tightens Sanctions on Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Unanimously Adopting Resolution 2397’, 22 December 2017, https://press.un.org/en/2017/sc13141.doc.htm.3 Phillip Brown, Oil Market Effects from US Economic Sanctions: Iran, Russia, Venezuela (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2020).4 US Department of Treasury, ‘Treasury Expands Burma-Related Sanctions and Designates Additional Jet Fuel Suppliers in Burma’, Press Release, 23 August 2023.5 US Congress, ‘S.4407 – China Oil Export Prohibition Act of 2022’, 15 June 2022. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/4407/amendments?r=2&s=1.6 Yangyang Chen et al., ‘Impact Assessment of Energy Sanctions in Geo-conflict: Russian – Ukrainian War’, Energy Reports 9 (2023), 3082–3095.7 Blake Clayton and Michael Levi, ‘The Surprising Sources of Oil’s Influence’, Survival 54/6 (2012), 107–122; Llewelyn Hughes and Eugene Gholz, ‘Energy, Coercive Diplomacy, and Sanctions’, in Thijs Van de Graaf, Benjamin K. 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Senior researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA). Formerly, Israel Institute Teaching Fellow in the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies (JIMES) at Washington University in St Louis. Ph.D. earned at the School of Political Sciences, University of Haifa.Ziv RubinovitzZiv Rubinovitz: Research Fellow at the Chaikin Chair for Geostrategy, and Research Coordinator at the Chaikin Chair, the Maritime Policy and Strategy Research Center, Ezri Center for Iran and Gulf States Research and Wydra Division for Shipping and Ports, University of Haifa. Formerly, Israel Institute Teaching Fellow at Sonoma State University. Ph.D. earned at the School of Political Sciences, University of Haifa.