By Taylor Luck, JORDAN TIMES
THE KINGDOM’S natural gas supplies from Egypt were cut on Tuesday in what marked the sixth attack on the Arab Gas Pipeline this year.
According to Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Khaled Toukan, Egyptian authorities announced yesterday that an explosion 25 kilometres southwest of Al Arish in Sinai early Tuesday severed the country’s gas pipeline to Jordan.
Egyptian authorities are currently assessing the damage caused by the blast to carry out repairs on the pipeline, which also supplies natural gas to Israel, Toukan added in a statement to The Jordan Times.
It was not immediately clear on Tuesday how long it needs for the necessary repairs on the pipeline to be carried out or when gas supplies to the Kingdom would resume.
With the cut in supply, the Kingdom’s power plants will resort to their fuel reserves, currently sufficient to meet the country’s electricity needs for 30 days.
Yesterday marked the latest in a series of disruptions in the supply of Egyptian gas, which Jordan relies on for 80 per cent of its electricity generation needs.
Prior to Tuesday’s explosion, Egypt was supplying Jordan with 100 million cubic feet of natural gas per day, well short of the 240 million cubic feet stipulated in a 15-year agreement inked in 2004.
Under a revised deal reached between Amman and Cairo last month, Egypt is to boost supplies to 150 million cubic feet per day this fall before raising quantities to 220 million cubic feet in 2012.
The new agreement, which brought to an end a favourable pricing scheme under which Jordan received gas for prices less than half of the market rate, includes additional quantities as compensation for the multiple disruptions in supply this year.
NOTE BY EDITOR: I am not sure whether this is a political or an economical act. If it was political why not blow up the pipeline further down towards Israel only and not to Jordan? If economical what is the point as a higher price was just recently negotiated…