Officials at the Ministry of Electricity have accused the Ministry of Petroleum of trying to hamper the project aimed to set up power stations working exclusively on natural gas. According to these officials, the Ministry of Petroleum is pressing ahead with stations working on mazut and gas, justifying this by saying that it must live up to its domestic and foreign commitments in terms of natural gas. According to sources, the new stations require more gas than the Ministry of Electricity gets. This, though, is rejected by the Ministry of Petroleum. Theses sources affirmed that the new stations are much better than the old ones, as they produce more and do not break down very often, while mazut causes many breakdowns and reduces the duration of the stations. They then added that the Ministry of Petroleum is preventing the Electricity Ministry from carrying out the second phase of the plan for future expansions of electricity. According to the sources, the Ministry of Electricity does not want to start a conflict with the Ministry of Petroleum and is trying to find peaceful solutions to the confrontation. However, they said the current situation causes problems such as blackouts, adding that the blackouts that happened last summer in most of the country were a direct result of the breakdowns at the generators working on mazut. Meanwhile, a document issued by the Petroleum General Egyptian Authority unveils that mazut consumption at power stations has reached record levels last year. According to this document, of which Al-Masry Al-Youm got a copy, the total consumption of mazut in power stations jumped from 1.6 million tons in the 2002-2003 financial year to 4.2 million tons in 2006-2007 before reaching 4.4 million tons last year (up by 175% over these years).
