In the name of energy secu­rity: the strug­gle over the expor­ta­tion of Israeli nat­ural gas

The aim of this study is to place the notion of energy secu­rity under crit­i­cal scrutiny by unpack­ing how dif­fer­ent actors manip­u­late the term through the mobi­liza­tion of exis­ten­tial lan­guage as a prism for cre­at­ing secu­ri­ti­za­tion dis­course. Through an exam­i­na­tion of an Israeli inter-ministerial com­mit­tee charged with devel­op­ing national pol­icy regard­ing newly-discovered nat­ural gas reserves off the coast of Israel, the study finds that the con­cept of energy secu­rity is open for manip­u­la­tion and var­i­ous inter­pre­ta­tions. While some actors stress envi­ron­men­tal accept­abil­ity and inde­pen­dency as pil­lars of energy secu­rity, oth­ers pri­or­i­tized sup­ply reli­a­bil­ity and geopo­lit­i­cal ben­e­fits asso­ci­ated with gas expor­ta­tion. Each def­i­n­i­tion of energy secu­rity was also found to be anchored in dif­fer­ent ide­olo­gies, goals, poli­cies and legit­imiz­ing fac­tors. The cou­pling of energy with secu­ri­ti­za­tion rhetoric was ulti­mately deter­mined as work­ing against coop­er­a­tive efforts, as com­mit­tee con­flicts inten­si­fied and sug­gested insti­tu­tional mea­sures became disproportional.

Speaker: Itay Fishhendler, Hebrew University of Jerusalem