Israel Matzav

Mubarak: Israel pays more for natural gas than any other country

Posting will be lighter for the next several hours since Mrs. Carl and I are attending a function at one of our children's yeshivas.

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has told investigators that Israel pays a much higher price for natural gas than any other country to which Egypt sells the fuel. In fact, Mubarak claims that Israel pays three times as much as anyone else.

Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak claimed that Israel was forced to pay prices three-times above market value, Egyptian daily Youm7 reported over the weekend. "We stopped exporting for sometime until we pushed them to raise the price from $1 to $3 and to allow us to review the price every three years," Mubarak told investigator Mustafa Suleiman who questioned him over the natural gas treaty with Israel. "They agreed with great difficulty to both conditions."

Youm7 published the transcript of the interrogation on Friday. Mubarak was questioned at the Sharm e-Sheikh hospital. He was questioned again in late April and on May 10 about the gas contract.

The main charge in the Egyptian government's case against Mubarak is that the price of gas set in a contract with Israel was below the market price. Prosecutors claim that the deal cost Egypt $715 million.

Israel says that this figure is based on a New York Times article, which the paper later corrected. Yosef Maiman's Merhav Group, a shareholder in Egypt's East Mediterranean Gas Company (EMG), which handles exports to Israel, said that Israel paid Egypt more than all its other export markets.

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Mubarak added, "The deal dates from the time of [former prime minister] Yitzhak Rabin, I can't recall the exact date. He told me in a meeting that there was a clause in the peace treaty which allowed Israel to purchase petrol from Egypt by entering a public sale alongside other buyers and indeed petrol was exported to them for some time.

"When we were in need of gas I asked him whether we could exchange the export of petrol to the export of gas through public sales too. Then Dr. Atef Ebeed became prime minister. I instructed him to enter negotiations with the Israelis regarding the export of gas and eventually the gas line was built."

I'd bet that Jordan and Lebanon and other Arab countries are paying much less than we are. Of course, that doesn't mean we're not paying below the market price. But it does mean that the Egyptian government is applying a double standard. They're happy to have Mubarak sell gas at below market price to other Arab countries, but not to Israel.

What a shock....

Labels: Egyptian gas pipeline, Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, Hosni Mubarak

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:53 PM