Israel beats Egypt to the punch on selling electricity to Europe
A new Israeli electrical plant being built in Ashdod is to be used to export electricity to Europe via Cyprus and Crete - and the Egyptians are seething about it.Calling the project Israel's "High Dam," after Egypt’s major Nile dam and electrical power station, the reports note that the project will receive joint European-American funding. The project will both aid Israel in reducing its dependence on gas imports and allow the Jewish state to export electricity to Cyprus and Europe.Heh.
The Israel Electric Company (IEC) and Greece's DEH Quantum Energy are expected to sign the MOU in a few weeks' time. This will lead to a feasibility study, which will be followed – if all goes well – by ratification of the project by the Israeli and Cypriot governments, in the course of 2012.
The cable will be 270 km. long. Another cable will connect Cyprus and Crete, which is part of the Greek electricity grid. An MOU for the longer cable has already been signed between Greece and Cyprus.
According to the Egyptian newspaper Rose al-Youssef, both former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and businessman Hussein Salem, owner of the company in charge of exporting Egypt's gas, who is currently a fugitive in Spain, knew about this project when they signed deals with the Israeli government.
The closeness of Israel to Cyprus and Greece helped make the High Dam project more feasible, since Israel will be linked to the Cypriot and Greek electricity networks with 53,000 kilometers of connections under the sea to European shores, and is later expected to extend for another 600 kilometers inside European territories.
The electricity generated by the High Dam will provide more than 10 European countries with an electric power estimated at 2,000 megawatts and will reach 4,000 megawatts by 2020.
Israel made information about the dam project available to the majority of European countries involved, but did not notify Egypt, Rose al-Youssef claimed.
Labels: Ashdod, Cyprus, European Union, Israel Electric Corporation
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:21 AM
3 Comments:
Mazel tov, Israel! Drill baby drill! And get that desal field tested, demo'd, etc. so California coastal cities can have it and stop draining the western U.S. states of every drop not nailed down! As a matter of fact, I'm chagrinned that Technion decided to make their stand in blue, blue downtown NYCity instead of out in the west somewhere...
Also, I want somebody (maybe this power plant?) to try taking the emissions, scrubbing them, and then routing the CO2 into greenhouses to fast-grow stuff. Because after all, CO2 is just plant food. If anybody knows any of the engineers on this thing, I would contact them about this.
Wait... the Egyptian gas guy is on the run in Spain? So you're going to use Egyptian gas in this new plant? I vote no (ha! since my vote has no legitimacy!) on that. Drill your own offshore!!! Cut off buying from Egypt! Otherwise, that electric plant (not to mention your entire country's gas supply) will be a hostage to the Muslim Brotherhood.
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