AMMAN - Energy officials voiced hope on Thursday that natural gas supplies from Egypt will resume next week, as the country's power plants continue to run on their fossil fuel reserves.
According to Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Khaled Toukan, Egyptian authorities have indicated promising progress on ongoing repairs on the Arab Gas Pipeline, which was damaged in a February 5 explosion in Al Arish.
"We hope that in the coming few days, the supply will be resumed," Toukan said on the sidelines of the signing of a nuclear agreement with Turkey on Thursday.
In the meantime, Egypt has granted Jordan electricity via a 500-megawatt capacity cable that runs underneath the Red Sea in order to compensate for the disrupted gas supplies, which the Kingdom relies on for 80 per cent of its electricity generation.
As per an agreement with Cairo, Jordan has received the bulk of electricity from Egypt, portions of which are at times reserved for Syria and Lebanon.
The National Electric Power Company (NEPCO) said the Kingdom's electricity situation has been "smooth" since the disruption forced power stations onto their heavy fuel oil and diesel reserves.
"Our generation capacity has exceeded the maximum load and operations have been normal," NEPCO's chief Ghaleb Maarbeh told The Jordan Times, expressing hope that natural gas supplies will resume "within one week".
Since the cut in natural gas, two power plants were switched to heavy fuel oil, with the remaining stations on their diesel reserves, a move which is estimated to cost the Kingdom "millions" each day.
Maarbeh noted that NEPCO has recently moved to purchase more than 20,000 additional tonnes of diesel in order to replenish the reserves, which are currently sufficient to sustain the Kingdom's electricity generation for three weeks.
Under a deal inked in 2004, Egypt provides some 2.4 billion cubic metres of natural gas at preferential prices a year for electricity generation.
This week the Egyptian army boosted its presence in the Sinai in order to protect the gas lines from any further attacks, the Associated Press reported on Thursday.
Representatives at GASCO, the Egyptian gas company which oversees and maintains the Arab Gas Pipeline, were unable to be reached.
© Jordan Times 2011
