The parliament's debate on natural gas exports to Israel exposes the incendiary nature of the affair, reports Gamal Essam El-Din Parliamentary deputies from the leftist opposition parties joined forces with the Muslim Brotherhood on Sunday and Monday to protest against reports on the commencement of exports of natural gas to Israel late last month. They also cried foul that the People's Assembly had been left in the dark over the Egyptian-Israeli agreement. Parliamentary speaker Fathi Sorour surprised MPs by suggesting that the government had committed an error not only when it failed to submit the gas export agreement with Israel to parliament, but also by failing to explain why it had done so. Minister of State for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Moufid Shehab did his best to contain the anger of MPs on Sunday. The following day Sorour decided that the whole matter should be referred to the assembly's Industry Committee. Headed by NDP business tycoon Mohamed Abul-Enein, the committee said it will summon Minister of Petroleum Sameh Fahmi and other officials next week to question them over the controversial deal. It was Hamdeen Sabahi, leader of the would-be pan Arab Al-Karama Party, who introduced the contentious agreement to debate on Sunday. Sabahi told MPs that it was imperative the assembly make it clear to the public that it had played no role in the deal which, he said, was concluded with Israel in 2005. Under the terms of the agreement, claimed Sabahi, the government committed itself to supplying Israel with natural gas at a price of $1.5 per million British thermal units (Btu), "much lower than the current price, which stands at $2.6 per million Btu. "I wonder," he asked, "which comes first on the list of the government's priorities, offering Egyptians bread at subsidised prices or providing Israelis with subsidised natural gas?" Sorour asked Fahmi and Shehab to reply to Sabahi. NDP MPs were surprised when Fahmi preferred to remain silent while Shehab insisted that he could not provide an immediate answer since he needed "time to obtain documents so as to provide clear and correct information". The following day Shehab was in a more combative mood. He denied claims that the Egyptian government had concluded any deal with Israel in 2005, pointing out that, "the agreement is between two private investment companies". Such deals, he added, do not fall under the mandate of the assembly. He also drew the MPs' attention to earlier assembly approval of petroleum and liquefied natural gas (LNG) deals, all of which contained articles stipulating the importance of exports, citing a joint-venture investment company deal signed in 2000 with the General Egyptian Organisation for Petroleum (GEOP). "Under this deal the investment company has a concession to buy natural gas from GEOP," he said, and could then sell the gas to any other country. Shehab also underlined that it was common practice in international deals to include clauses fixing the price, and questioned Sabahi's figures. The average cost of gas production, he said, ranges from between $0.65 to $0.7 per million Btu. "In addition, the average price of Egyptian LNG exports to Israel is more than $1.5 per million Btu." Shehab also revealed that Ministry of Petroleum officials are in the process of revising all LNG export deals with the goal of generating an additional $18 billion in revenues over the next 20 years. Shehab did say that the governments of Israel and Egypt had concluded a memorandum of understanding in 2005, under the terms of which a 100-kilometre subterranean pipeline would be built to supply gas pumped from the gasfields in North Sinai to the Israeli town of Ashkelon. Shehab stressed that the flow of Egyptian LNG remains in its "initial stage". Predictably, Shehab's words did little to contain the assembly's more excitable members. Brotherhood MPs claimed that the government was committing a "crime" against the Palestinian people by supplying Israel with gas at such prices, while Ragab Hilal Hemeida, MP from the liberal-oriented Ghad Party, warned that "after selling gas to Israel, the government might take another step and export Nile water to the Zionist enemy." Left-leaning MP Gamal Zahran lamented that at a time when millions of Egyptians are in desperate need for fuel at a reasonable price the government has opted to supply subsidised gas to Israel. Mahmoud Latif, chairman of the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company, told Al-Ahram Weekly that GEOP had agreed to export 1.7 billion cubic metres (60 billion cubic feet) of gas a year over the next 15 years through an Egyptian-Israeli consortium, East Mediterranean Gas. (see p.6)
