Butane gas cylinders have become a major crisis in most governorates, reports Ahmed Kotb Shortages in supply of butane gas cylinders are evident all over the country as warehouses complain about less quantities delivered to them, leading to long queues by people all day long, waiting for their only source of home cooking and warm water. Many Egyptians depend on butane canisters for cooking and heating water because natural gas pipelines still have not reached many areas in the country. The crisis has led to a flourishing black market where the price of a canister in some places reached LE30, while the official prices are below LE3. Pressing the Egyptian Company for Transporting and Connecting Gas, Butagasco, on the main reasons behind the shortage, the company declined to respond. Minister of Social Solidarity Gouda Abdel-Khalek was quoted as saying that the crisis is mainly caused by political unrest in Libya because Egypt imports more than 50 per cent of its butane gas needs from Libya and Saudi Arabia. Another reason, Abdel-Khalek added, is violence and thuggery actions. "Trailers that move imported gas from ports to filling stations are being hijacked." In some areas, people sleep by the warehouses waiting for trucks loaded with canisters to arrive at any time, and start fighting over getting a cylinder once they arrive. Sometimes the trucks do not reach warehouses at all. "Trucks that move the gas cylinders to us are being hijacked as well," said Ashraf El-Sayed, owner of a butane gas cylinders' warehouse. He added that some private filling stations, taking advantage of the loose security conditions, keep the canisters to sell them later in the black market. There are 2,800 warehouses distributed in all governorates which were dispensing almost one million cylinders per day before the revolution started 25 January. Since then, production has decreased by 20 per cent according to some reports. "The core of the problem lies in the decreasing quantities of imported butane due to the Ministry of Petroleum's debts accumulation to the banks that finance importing deals," said Ramadan Abul-Ela, professor of petroleum engineering at Alexandria University, who added that greedy dealers and thugs helped maximise the problem by trading in the black market. Abul-Ela declared that the problem of cylinder shortages is recurrent and it takes place around this time of the year, and yet the Ministry of Petroleum did not take any precautions. "Additionally, the Ministry of Social Solidarity should take more serious steps in securing safe deliveries to warehouses and make sure that canisters will not go on sale in the black mark," he added. The Ministry of Social Solidarity, however, announced it started to take serious steps to control the market through sending inspectors, by day and night, to report any violation by warehouses and distributors, as well as securing distribution trucks with police and army forces. Abul-Ela stressed on the importance of taking precautionary steps to prevent future troubles. "We should stop importing butane and start making use of the national natural gas production," he explained, adding that the process means producing new cylinders that will tolerate higher pressures, but that will save us a lot in the future.
