The pipeline that transports natural gas from Egypt to Jordan was blown up on Sunday morning for the first time in more than a year. The fire was quickly put out, but the flow of natural gas was interrupted (Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit).
Egyptian security officials say suspected
Islamic militants have bombed a natural gas pipeline to Jordan south of
the city of el-Arish in the Sinai Peninsula.
The attacks early Sunday on two points on
the pipeline started fires that were soon put out, but the flow of gas
was disrupted, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity
because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
...
The pipeline, designed to carry Egyptian
natural gas to Israel, Jordan, Syrian and Lebanon, has functioned
intermittently since the aftermath of the 2011 Egyptian revolution
caused the security situation in the Sinai to deteriorate.
Due to shortages in Egypt, it currently only supplies gas to Jordan.
In another year or so, when Israel's natural gas capability starts coming online, this will matter a lot less than it does today.
Video: How the Egypt-Israel gas pipeline gets blown up
Egypt has suspended natural gas sales to Israel, but that doesn't stop those who want to blow up the pipeline anyway. There was another explosion and fire last week.
In this video, which was shown on Egyptian television, the group "Supporters of Jerusalem" in the Sinai Peninsula reveal how they blow up the Egypt-Israel gas pipeline. You will see them planting the explosives and hear them shouting Allahu Akhbar when they succeed.
The Egyptian perspective was aired recently by Morsi in a television interview during the presidential campaign. Israel, he said, had not kept its commitment under the Camp David accords to reach a broader Middle East peace, particularly with the Palestinians. Reflecting the views of his movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as wider popular sentiment, Morsi accused the Israelis of acting in bad faith since they signed the peace agreements. “Where is the mutual respect?” he said. “Where is what the agreement says about a just and comprehensive peace among all peoples of the region? Where’s the mutual non-belligerence? . . . Where are the good neighborly relations mentioned in the agreement?”
Afterwards he presents the Israeli view:
In Israel, the treaty raised hopes of developing trade and cultural links, tourism, and cooperation in business and agriculture. But ideological resistance among parts of the Egyptian elite to ties with Israel, along with the strains of the continuing conflict with the Palestinians, had a chilling effect on the relationship. The sense in Israel was that Egypt was not interested in genuine normalization that would go beyond a state of non-belligerence. Egyptian tourists and businessmen did not come to Israel, the Egyptian press carried virulently anti-Israeli cartoons and articles, and trade ties were limited. The reservation emanated from the top; President Hosni Mubarak avoided travel to Israel, coming only once, for the funeral of the assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. “Since the early 1980s, Israeli leaders decided that peace with Egypt is too important to argue over every dot and comma, so in many cases they turned a blind eye to large and small Egyptian violations,” said Eli Shaked, a former Israeli ambassador to Egypt.
The Egyptian view was presented emphatically and as "wide popular sentiment." Even the Israeli side is presented with the stipulation that the lack of progress in peace with the Palestinians (if you ignore Oslo, the withdrawals from most of the West Bank and Gaza) as a contributory reason for chilled relations with Egypt. Greenberg doesn't even suggest the likely explanation that the concern for the Palestinians was a pretext for preexisting Egyptian resistance to peace with Israel.
Two other things are worth mentioning.
One as Greenberg reports:
Still, remaining links with Israel could be weakened. A 2005 deal to supply Israel with natural gas, seen as a symbol of Mubarak’s ties with Israel, was canceled in April after criticism that it was tainted by corruption and that the gas was sold at below-market prices, costing Egypt millions of dollars in lost revenue.
But was this criticism accurate? Not having a deal also cost Egypt millions. But Barry Rubin observed:
Oh, by the way, the Egyptians have now said they will not sell natural gas any more to Israel. The pipeline that had been providing 40-50 percent of Israel’s natural gas and has been attacked numerous times by Islamist attackers in Sinai will be closed permanently. The $460 million invested in the pipeline project, mostly by Israeli, is gone forever, plus Israel will have to find a substitute source until its own offshore wells come online .
In other words, Egypt got a good deal from Israel, yet Greenberg only focused on the criticism that cast Israel as benefiting from the old regime.
Also, Greenberg quoted a statement of Mohammed Morsi that sounded perfectly reasonable. No doubt the statement was geared for Western consumption. But it doesn't take much to discover that Morsi hasn't always been so circumspect. Here's how he described Israel two years ago:
In a statement to "Ikhwanweb" Morsy maintained that it appears that the United States is pressuring the Palestinian Authority to engage in fabricated long hauled peace talks, indicating US bias towards the Israel Occupation Authorities at the expense of the Palestinians' wellbeing. He continued "The Arabs disappointing response was clearly evident as they welcomed Israel 's criminal leaders into their countries with the conducting of the Arab Peace Initiative Committee at the Arab League's headquarters. The strong U.S. and Israeli pressure to resume direct talks raises many questions regarding the feasibility of conducting such negotiations amid the continuing Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip, the progressive steps towards Judaizing East Jerusalem, the seizing of parts of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the imprisonment of Sheikh Raed Salah and the destruction of houses in the Palestinian cities in the West Bank. Morsy called on the Palestinian Authority to view the inter-Palestinian reconciliation agenda as sincerely as discussions with the Israeli Occupation, stressing that it would have been more suitable if the PA and the Arab League had discussed ending the Palestinian division as opposed to discussing the illusional peace initiative.
Later on Morsi praised "resistance" to Israel, which is a code word for terrorism.
Greenberg had a chance to give further background, but instead fell too easily into the blame Israel narrative.
2) Some more views on Egypt
In his analysis of the election of Morsi as president of Egypt, Worst case scenario in Egypt, Martin Kramer speculates:
If you think this is pie in the sky, then it isn’t difficult to imagine the “Plan B” of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is to find ways to raise the rent Egypt collects from the West and rich Arabs for its geopolitical position. Call it a shakedown, call it a bailout, it doesn’t matter. The message Egypt is sending is that it’s too big to fail, and that the world, and especially the United States, owes it. The deputy guide, Khayrat ash-Shater, put it directly: “We strongly advise the Americans and the Europeans to support Egypt during this critical period as compensation for the many years they supported a brutal dictatorship.” Egypt, which is one of the largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid, is thus owed compensation. A key part of this narrative is that Mubarak sold peace with Israel on the cheap. In Egypt it is believed that the $1.3 billion that Egypt receives a year in military aid, and hundreds of millions more in economic aid, are just a portion of what Egypt’s adherence to peace is worth. To get more, the plan of the Muslim Brotherhood is to persuade Washington that it can’t take Egypt for granted. The strategy will be to stimulate crises that will be amenable to resolution by the transfer of resources. No one can predict what those crises will look like. It’s hard to imagine that some of them won’t involve Israel.
Consider the similarity in sentiment between ash-Shater and Thomas Friedman, in End of Mideast Wholesale:
Let’s start with Israel. For the last 30 years, Israel enjoyed peace with Egypt wholesale — by having peace with just one man, Hosni Mubarak. That sale is over. Today, post-Mubarak, to sustain the peace treaty with Egypt in any kind of stable manner, Israel is going to have to pay retail. It is going to have to make peace with 85 million Egyptians. The days in which one phone call by Israel to Mubarak could shut down any crisis in relations are over.
Both argue that peace with Egypt needs to be bought. But shouldn't peace be of value to Egypt on its own?
Thankfully, none of this anticipated violence came to fruition. But it should not go unnoticed that, in the first presidential election following Egypt’s pro-democratic election, it was the new ruling party—the Muslim Brotherhood—that was preparing for months to reject an electoral outcome against it. By contrast, members of the old, autocratic ruling party, who overwhelmingly endorsed Shafik, swallowed Morsi’s victory without incident. Egypt may have ousted a dictator, but its new rulers will only play by democratic rules so long as they enhance their own power.
Fouad Ajami, though, argues that it's too early to judge the Muslim Brotherhood: Many are eager to rebuke this Egyptian interlude. Those who had given the reign of Hosni Mubarak three decades of indulgence are unwilling to see in the last 18 months the birth pangs of a democratic possibility. They forget or ignore even recent history, how the Egyptian people had abandoned politics and all but given up on their country. A new hope has arisen in that weary country. Are Egyptians not entitled to a decent interval before we consign them, yet again, to a despotic fate?
And here's some surprisingly good sense from Thomas Friedman in The Fear Factor:
The U.S. has some leverage in terms of foreign aid, military aid and foreign investment — and we should use it by making clear that we respect the vote of the Egyptian people, and we want to continue to help Egypt thrive, but our support will be conditioned on certain principles. What principles? Our principles? No. The principles identified by the 2002 U.N. Arab Human Development Report, which was written by and for Arabs. It said that for the Arab world to thrive it needs to overcome its deficit of freedom, its deficit of knowledge and its deficit of women’s empowerment. And, I would add, its deficit of religious and political pluralism. We should help any country whose government is working on that agenda — including an Egypt led by a Muslim Brotherhood president — and we should withhold our support from any that is not.
Once you get past his tropes about the Arab Human Development Report and the deficits it reports, this isn't unreasonable. (One deficit I'd add is a deficit of tolerance for Jews and Israel, specifically.) Of course, given his record, I would assume that if Morsi doesn't abide by those principles, Friedman would be making excuses for ignoring Morsi's record and supporting him regardless.
3) Back
The past few days we've had an internet outage at home. Verizon seems to have fixed the problem.
With Israel facing electricity shortages and possible brownouts this summer as a result of Egypt cutting off our natural gas supply, isn't it a bid odd that we continue to supply electricity (for free!) to Hamas-ruled Gaza alongside the Egyptians? Well, Environment Minister Gilad Erdan thinks it's more than odd. He wants to put a stop to it.
Speaking in an interview with Army Radio, Erdan said that Gaza has its own power stations and legally, it is not clear that Israel is responsible for supplying power to Gaza, especially after Israel's 2005 disengagement from the terrotory. Gaza's power plant provides electricity to two-thirds of its population. Power is also supplied to the Gaza grid through power lines from Israel and Egypt.
Erdan said that it is "absurd" that Israel should experience power shortages while the "terror entity next to us will get electricity that they don't pay for." The Energy and Water Ministry expects shortages in Israel between June and September.
The environmental protection minister said that the four percent of power supplied to Gaza could prevent outages in Israel at times of peak usage.
Erdan stated that while "water and energy are supposed to be outside the conflict" if their is no choice and Israel needs the energy than he sees no legal obligation to provide Gaza with the electricity.
Yes, it's absurd. But when has that ever mattered in the Middle East?
Egyptian parliament demands expulsion of Israeli ambassador, stopping natural gas exports
The Egyptian parliament, whose largest party is the Muslim Brotherhood, and whose second largest party is an even more radical Muslim party, has demanded the expulsion of Israel's ambassador to Egypt, the recalling of Egypt's ambassador to Israel, and a cessation of natural gas exports to Israel (which aren't flowing right now anyway because the pipeline was blown up again last week) (Hat Tip: MFS - The Other News).
In an evening session Monday, the People’s Assembly demanded the deportation of the Israeli ambassador, Yaakov Amitai, and the withdrawal of the Egyptian ambassador from Tel Aviv.
The assembly voted unanimously on a statement prepared by the Committee on Arab Affairs, which also called for stopping gas exports to Israel in protest against the brutal attacks committed by Israel against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, considering it a flagrant violation of human rights.
Assembly speaker Saad al-Katatny asked a special parliamentary committee to follow up the implementation of the demands with the government.
The statement said, “Egypt after the revolution will never be a friend of the Zionist entity, the first enemy of Egypt and the Arab nation,” and demanded that the Egyptian government review all its relations and agreements with that “enemy.”
It also called for activating the Arab boycott of the “Zionist entity” and the international companies that deal with it, considering such boycott strong support of the “choice of resistance,” the strategic option for the liberation of the occupied territories.
Aren't you glad that Hussein Obama cut loose that evil Hosni Mubarak who managed to keep the peace for 30 years?
Israel Radio reports (2:00 am) yet another explosion in the pipeline that supplies natural gas to Israel and Jordan. No word on injuries yet, but once again the supplies are going to be cut off for the sixth time since the Egyptian revolution in February.
Aren't you glad that the Obama administration backed dumping Mubarak?
Egypt-Israel gas pipeline attacked for third time this month
For the third time in the month of July, and the fifth time in 2011, the Egyptian gas pipeline to Israel was attacked on Saturday. This time it wasn't even running.
After the attack on the pipeline and a separate weekend attack on a police station in the port town of El-Arish, Egyptian security sources told Israel Hayom that the new government in Cairo was losing control over part of the peninsula.
According to reports, gunmen launched rocket-propelled grenades at the al-Shulaq natural gas terminal, hitting the pipeline that directs gas to Israel and Jordan. The line, which has not been repaired since a previous attack on July 12, did not contain any gas.
Reuters reported that the attackers initially tried to storm the area's main gas station, but fled after being confronted by security forces.
No casualties were reported in the pipeline attack.
After the July 12 attack on the pipeline, Israeli National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau said the sabotage symbolized the deterioration of the “central pillar anchoring Israel's peace treaty with Egypt -- the economic pillar.”
“From the economic perspective, the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt is crumbling,” Landau said at the time, adding that the consequence of the repeated attacks on the pipeline delivering gas to Israel would be an increase in the cost of Israeli electricity.
In a related development, Egyptian state media reported that at least six people were killed and at least 21 were injured in unrest that began Friday, when more than 100 armed men rode into the town of El-Arish in Sinai and tried to storm a police station. Authorities said some of the attackers waved flags bearing Islamic slogans as they fired shots into the air.
Other reports said some of the attackers shouted slogans calling for the Sinai to be turned into “an Islamic emirate.”
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.
...
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.
For the fourth time since February, the natural gas pipeline that delivers gas from Egypt to Israel and Jordan has been sabotaged, this time near El Arish. The pipeline, which was also set on fire last week, was due to begin pumping gas at a normal pace at the end of this week.
Nile television said flames from the blast near the town of Al-Arish could be seen up to 20 kms (12 miles) away. It gave no details on the causes of the explosion or the extent of the damages.
But MENA, without citing its sources, said there had been an attack on the station that is used to "export Egyptian gas abroad", including supplying Israel. Egypt also sells gas to Jordan and other countries.
The agency said fire trucks were trying to contain the flames and security forces were hunting down those responsible.
It also said a security guard and his family were injured in the blast.
Funny, these things didn't happen when Mubarak was in charge.
UPDATE 8:23 AM
Israel Radio reports based on Egyptian sources that what is at issue here is Bedouin demands for protection money and the Egyptian interim government's refusal to pay it. What could go wrong?
For the third time since February there has been an explosion and fire on the gas pipeline between Egypt and Israel. Once again, the cause is likely sabotage.
Saboteurs blew up a pipeline carrying gas from Egypt to Israel and Jordan on Monday, forcing a shutdown in the flow of gas, Egyptian security sources said.
The explosion took place in the early morning at a station along the pipeline in the northern Sinai Peninsula at Bir Abd, 60 km east of the Suez Canal, the sources said.
It was the third attack since early February on the pipeline, which supplies natural gas to Israel and Jordan, local cement plants and a power station.
A security source said men with machine guns in a small truck forced guards at the station to leave, then planted explosive charges.
"We do not have sufficient information until now, but in principle the explosion happened in the same way that the two previous explosions happened," another security source told Reuters.
The natural gas company that runs the pipeline closed it down after the explosion, the source said.
Egypt says that it's reviewing its contract to supply natural gas to Israel. But it's trying to put that review in a context of reviewing all of its contracts with foreign buyers, including those contracts' pricing provisions.
Egypt is reviewing the timetable for resuming gas exports to Israel and wants to negotiate more flexible contracts with foreign gas buyers, the Egyptian oil minister said on Thursday.
Asked when Egypt would resume the exports, Petroleum Minister Abdullah Ghorab said the issue was "under review".
...
Israel received natural gas from Egypt under a 20-year deal signed in 2005, but flows were halted when an armed gang attacked a metering station in North Sinai on April 27.
Supplies have been halted for over a month, and US investors in the company that operates the Israel export pipeline, Ampal American Israel Corp, have taken legal steps against Egypt's government to ensure gas flows resume.
Israel gets up to 45 percent of its natural gas from Egypt.
Egypt said in April it would review its gas contracts with other states, including Israel and Jordan, amid accusations that the government of deposed President Hosni Mubarak had improperly negotiated the sale of gas at preferential prices.
In an apparent reference to Egypt's efforts to renegotiate gas terms, Ghorab said on Thursday he favored flexible contracts and pricing formulas to allow a "fair and sustainable relationship between sellers and buyers".
"This was exactly our understanding in Egypt of how this relation should be when we got into a renegotiation process for revising Egyptian export gas prices for our long-time contracts that have been accomplished a long time ago under completely different world market conditions," Ghorab said.
The rhetoric in the media indicate that this has nothing to do with pricing or market conditions. And even if the current military regime restores Israel's gas supplies on whatever terms, I would not expect that supply to continue if the Muslim Brotherhood takes over.
But perhaps this is why the Egyptians are at least talking in terms of prices and market conditions.
Egypt: 'Palestinians' behind Wednesday's gas explosion
This should not come as too big a surprise: the Egyptian army says that 'Palestinian' terrorists were behind Wednesday's gas pipeline explosion.
A report quoted officials who said that Wednesday's blast at a pipeline in Sinai was engineered in part by a PA terror group. Salah al-Masri, in charge of security for the Egyptian army in northern Sinai, told a Saudi newspaper that in his estimation it was impossible to say that local Bedouin could carry out such a powerful attack. He added that some PA terrorists had been arrested over the past week, and that they had been found to have been in possession of caches of weapons.
After pipeline explosion, Israel can meet energy needs but at a cost
In the aftermath of Wednesday's sabotage explosion of a gas pipeline near El Arish, the Israel Electric Company says that it can fulfill the country's energy needs, but at both a financial and an environmental cost.
“The Israel Electric Corporation has the means to guarantee a continuous supply of electricity to meet the country’s demands for all of its users, regardless of the cessation in the Egyptian gas supply,” said Dr. Amit Mor, CEO and energy specialist at the Eco Energy consulting firm. “IEC will do this by utilizing the Ashkelon and Hadera coal plants at maximum capacity.”
Coal currently fuels the production of 62 percent of Israel’s electricity, while natural gas accounts for 36% – two-fifths of which is supplied by Egypt, according to Mor.
Senior officials at the IEC convened on Wednesday for a discussion headed by Chairman Yiftah Ron-Tal and CEO Eli Glickman to appraise the situation and determine potential alternative methods for running power plants, including the use of petroleum, the corporation said in a statement.
“We do not expect that as a result of the latest event there will be any drops in the supply of electricity from our power plants,” said National Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon.
“The IEC is well-equipped to deal with such incidents.”
While he agreed that the IEC is completely prepared to handle the situation, Mor said that the current case will be slightly more difficult to manage than that of February “because the demand for electricity during these upcoming days and weeks is significantly higher than the demand for electricity back in the winter,” due to increased use of air conditioning.
“It was a mild winter,” he said.
In addition to making extra use of the coal plants, the IEC will probably convert several of the stations that currently run on natural gas to operate on heavy fuel oil and diesel instead, Mor predicted.
Though sufficient to fulfill Israel’s energy needs, these switches to coal and oil will cost the IEC an additional $1.5 million-$2m. per day, however, according to Mor.
“Coal prices have increased significantly in the past few weeks, due to an increasing demand for coal in China and in the international market. Now coal is more costly than the Egyptian gas,” he said.
Egyptian gas currently costs Israel somewhere between $4.10- 4.50 per million British thermal units (there are 6 million British thermal units in one barrel of oil), while heavy fuel oil costs $20 per million and diesel costs $25 per million, Mor explained.
“[Diesel] is six times higher than the price of Egyptian gas,” he continued.
“At the end of the day, we, the electricity consumers, will pay that additional cost through the price of electricity.
“If the halt of the gas supply is short, then the increase in the electricity price will be marginal, but if the halt is long or permanent, then the resultant increase in the electricity price will be significant.”
After last summer, which saw temperatures in Jerusalem soar over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, many people in this city have installed central air conditioning for the first time. That means that electric use this summer is likely to spike much faster than it did last summer. And the costs aren't just financial.
“Burning coal and fuel oil has adverse environment impacts because of the higher emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate metals, which have negative health effects, as well as carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming and climate change,” Mor said.
“Although heavy fuel oil is significantly cheaper than diesel, due to environmental reasons, the priority should be to utilize the diesel-based power plants before the utilization of the heavy fuelbased power plants.”
Some of you asked yesterday when Israel's newly discovered natural gas (not oil) supply from the fields off the Haifa coast would be coming online. Current estimates of that are 2013-14. Not soon enough.
And one other little tidbit I heard on Wednesday. You know how we're constantly hearing how cheaply Israel is buying natural gas from Egypt? Well, we're paying multiples of what Jordan, Lebanon and Syria are paying.
A pipeline that sends natural gas from Egypt to Israel and Jordan exploded early Wednesday morning, but the cause was not immediately known.
No injuries were immediately reported.
The explosion took place in a suburb of the Egyptian Sinai town of El Arish. In February, a gas pipeline in El Arish that sent natural gas to Jordan was set on fire, officials said.
The state-run MENA news agency said the February incident was a suspected terrorist attack.
It was not clear whether that incident was connected to the political unrest in Egypt.
Of course it's 'not clear.' What is clear is that it's connected to people who want to stop selling gas to Israel.
UPDATE 12:45 PM
Wednesday morning's attack was apparently carried out by 'unknown saboteurs.'
The New York Post reports that the Egypt-Israel gas pipeline, which was shut down as a precaution on February 5 after an explosion in the adjoining Egypt-Jordan gas pipeline, may not be reopened.
"That pipeline may stay offline," said Delphi Global Analysis Group founder David Wurmser, who from 2002 to 2003 was senior adviser to Under Secretary of State John Bolton. "I think the days of that pipeline are numbered."
Israel needs the natural gas. Experts said the country has enough energy resources to last only until 2013, including gas shipments from Egypt. Its promising $3 billion Tamar natural gas project is not expected to begin delivering fuel until the end of 2013.
"The question is how do you get to 2014?" Wurmser said.
Michael Makovsky from the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank, said Israel cannot buy fuel from its Arab neighbors but could cobble together a solution by buying coal or expensive diesel and fuel oil.
Even before the Egypt uprising that put the military in power, the Egyptian Energy Minister faced pressure to shut off the pipeline because Egypt itself is facing an energy shortage.
"The military might see closing the pipeline as an easy way to show protesters it is listening to their concerns," Makovsky said.
Anyone want to provide two years' worth of natural gas for a small Middle Eastern country? I may have some helpful connections....
In an earlier post, I reported on a claim that this past weekend's explosion in a pipeline transporting natural gas from Egypt to Jordan was caused by a leak. Now, an investigation has proven otherwise: It was a terror attack.
Egyptian Judge Abdel Nasser el-Tayeb, the chief investigator of the Feb. 5 explosion, said Monday that four masked gunmen set off explosives in the gas terminal by remote control after restraining the guards, according to testimony by the guards, The Associated Press reported.
The head of Egypt's natural gas company had said the explosion was caused by a gas leak.
Gas supply also was cut off to Jordan, according to reports.
It will take about a week for the pipeline to be repaired and for the flow of gas to be restored to Israel.
Terrorism sure seems like a much more likely cause.
The natural gas pipeline explosion on which I reported last night, which has shut down natural gas supplies from Egypt to both Israel and Jordan, was apparently caused by a leak, and not by sabotage, according to a Sky News report cited by the Lebanese blog Ya Libnan.
Earlier, the regional governor in the Sinai, Abdel Wahab Mabrouk, had blamed the incident on “sabotage”.
The head of the Egyptian company for natural gas, Magdy Toufik, countered that earlier claim and said in a statement that the fire broke out as a result of a “small amount of gas leaking”.
Egyptian state TV had also blamed “terrorists” for the explosion, which saw flames towering into the sky near the Gaza Strip.
The blast came as a two-week-old popular uprising has engulfed Cairo and Alexandria.
...
The leak and explosion occurred early Saturday at a gas terminal in the northern Sinai town of el-Arish, several hundred yards away from the local airport.
Mr Mabrouk told Egypt’s Nile News TV that the fire was brought under control by mid-morning, after valves allowing the flow of gas from the terminal into pipelines were shut off.
The pipeline was carrying gas to Jordan but Israel temporarily shut down its service, officials said, as “a precaution”.
Jordan said gas supplies from Egypt were expected to remain halted for a week until the pipeline was repaired.
A Jordanian energy source said the kingdom had switched power generating stations to burning fuel oil and diesel as a precaution, after the cutoff of the Egyptian supply.
The blaze shooting vertically in the air was visible from rooftops of homes next to the Gaza-Egypt border, about 44 miles away.
The pipelines transport gas from Egypt’s Port Said on the Mediterranean Sea to Israel and Jordan and supplies about 25% of the gas used to generate Israel’s electrical power.
...
Al-Jazeera quoted sources at the Egyptian energy ministry as saying that gas import to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel would stop for 2 weeks following the blast at the gas pipeline. Lebanon has been receiving the gas supplies via Syria.
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal dismissed the possibility that what's going on now in Egypt could affect Israel's natural gas supplies. On Saturday, they were proven wrong.
Saboteurs blew up a pipeline that runs through Egypt's Northern Sinai, state television reported on Saturday, disrupting flows to Israel and Jordan after Islamist groups called on militants to exploit the unrest that has rocked the government.
Egyptian state television quoted an official on Saturday as saying that the "situation is very dangerous and explosions were continuing from one spot to another" along the pipeline, adding that "it is a big terrorist operation."
A security source in North Sinai said "foreign elements" targeted the branch of the pipe that supplies Jordan.
The Egyptian army closed the main source of gas supplying the pipeline and were trying to control the fires. Television footage on Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya showed a tower of flames at the scene of the blast.
Following the explosion, Israel Radio said, quoting sources in the consortium overseeing imports, that the blast did not target supplies to Israel but they had been halted as a precaution.
"We are looking into all the details but it is too soon to say how long supplies [from Egypt] will be affected," a source in the Israeli National Infrastructure Ministry told Reuters.
Israel gets 40% of its natural gas supply from Egypt (the only well we have online right now is Yam Thetis and that will go dry in 2014).
I'm actually surprised they attacked the Jordanian supply and not ours, although maybe they are trying to help the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
