05:18 PM
Tuesday 07 September 2021
Books-Ahmed El-Sayed:
An official source at the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources said that the meeting to be held tomorrow in the Jordanian capital between the ministers of petroleum and mineral resources in Egypt, Jordanian energy, oil and mineral resources in Syria, and energy and water in Lebanon, will discuss the possibility of exporting Egyptian gas to Lebanon through Syrian territory.
The source added that the meeting will discuss the possibility of increasing the quantities of Egyptian gas supplied to the Jordanian market.
The source said that the talks are still at the beginning, and the meeting will discuss the size of the Lebanese market’s needs of Egyptian gas, in addition to the quantities that Jordan wants to increase during the coming period, to increase its capacity to generate electric power.
Syria has expressed its willingness to meet a Lebanese request to “pass” gas and electricity from Egypt and Jordan to Lebanon through its territory, as part of a US plan that may exclude Lebanon from sanctions against Syria.
This came in the first official Lebanese visit to Syria in a decade, which took place at the beginning of this week.
And last month, the Lebanese presidency announced that US Ambassador Dorothy Shea informed President Michel Aoun by phone of her country’s decision to help Lebanon provide electric power from Jordan through Syria through Egyptian gas.
The US ambassador stated, “The transfer of Egyptian gas through Jordan and Syria to northern Lebanon will be facilitated,” noting that negotiations are underway with the World Bank to secure financing for the price of Egyptian gas, repair and strengthening of electricity transmission lines, and the required maintenance of gas pipelines.
The Egyptian gas will be transported to Lebanon, through the Arab Gas Pipeline project, which was agreed to be established in the year 2000, and which is supposed to transport Egyptian gas to the Arab Mashreq countries, and from there to Europe, with a length of 1200 km. The inauguration of the first section of the line, which connects the Egyptian city of Al-Arish with the Jordanian Aqaba, while in 2008 the completion of the line’s path inside Syrian territory, all the way to Tripoli in Lebanon.
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