Eight years have passed since the U.S. company Kosmos Energy announced its withdrawal from Western Sahara. The company held a major oil and gas exploration license off the coast of Boujdour, signed with Morocco, the occupying power of the territory.

Despite its departure, the website www.westernsaharaoil.com remained online, reflecting the company's stance on the Western Sahara conflict. The site contained significant misrepresentations of international law, omitting any reference to the Saharawi people's right to self-determination or their required consent. It also featured numerous letters and statements from the company that defended the operation.

In 2002, the United Nations legal service stated that any further oil exploration in Western Sahara would require the consent of the Saharawi people. Nevertheless, Kosmos entered the territory in 2004 under a license later named Boujdour Maritime. The company obtained operatorship in 2006 and, between 2014 and 2015, became the first to conduct offshore hydrocarbon drilling in the area since the occupation began.

After unsuccessful exploration results and the loss of key shareholders due to controversy, Kosmos Energy withdrew from Western Sahara in 2017. However, a statement from Morocco’s state oil company, ONHYM, in January 2018 suggested that Kosmos had left the door open for a possible return.

Now, the website is offline. The domain www.westernsaharaoil.com was purchased on 9 January 2015 and launched on 25 February 2015—just four days before the company announced that its exploratory well was dry. Kosmos appears to have let its ownership of the domain expire in January 2025, and it was seemingly acquired on 1 March 2025 by a domain reselling company.

A video of Kosmos Energy’s operations in occupied Western Sahara remains available on YouTube.

In 2014, Western Sahara Resource Watch published a report on Kosmos Energy’s planned drilling operations in the region.

In December 2022, NewMed Energy, a subsidiary of the Delek Group, announced that it had signed an exploration agreement with Adarco and ONHYM for the same area that Kosmos Energy once operated in. Under the agreement, NewMed and Adarco each hold a 37.5% stake, while ONHYM holds 25%. The agreement is set to last for a maximum of eight years. Whereas the terms of the Delek deal was agreed in 2022, the agreement only got approved by the Moroccan government in February 2025. 

In a curious turn, Kosmos Energy has recently, seemingly without irony, renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the incorrect "Gulf of America" on its official website, www.kosmosenergy.com.

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