The Jordanian Council of Ministers agreed to the Lateral Agreement to raise the selling prices of natural gas from Egypt, said a governmental source. The Jordanian Council of Ministers agreed to the deal and recommendations of the ministerial Economic Development committee, the source said today to the Jordanian newspaper Arab Today. The source pointed out the Jordanian Council of Ministers delegated the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources, Khaled Tokan, to sign the agreement with Egypt. He will leave to Cairo to sign the agreement of improving gas prices soon. The council expects Egyptian gas to be flowing to Jordan immediately after the signing of the new agreement. The Egyptian natural gas supplies witnessed a dramatic decline in the amount of gas reaching Jordan, about 27 percent decline last year, said Jordanian authorities. That percentage doubled down in 2011, with the frequent outage of supply, repeated bombings of Jordanian carrier gas pipelines, five explosions since February. The agreement of 2004 between Egypt and Jordan of supplying Jordan with natural Egyptian gas validates for 15 years and states to provide Jordan with 240 million cubic feet per day. This amount is enough to produce 80 percent of Jordanian's needs for electricity, and the remaining percentage is produced by heavy fuel oil. The Jordanian government is studying several options to equip itself with natural gas from other countries, like Russia and Qatar, along with Egypt. The Jordanian government believes this will prevent any shortage of gas support to Jordan. The repeated shortage caused large financial losses to the state's treasury. Jordanian authorities said financial losses reach U.S. $5 million daily. Jordan depends on outside resources to save up to 96 percent of its resource of energy, including 46 percent of Egyptian gas and 50 percent of oil, which mainly arrives from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The Egyptian Minister of Petroleum, Abdallah Ghorab, said there will be a preview of selling prices of gas agreement between Egypt and Jordan next week. It is said there were some issues that delayed the presentation. Ghorab pointed out the continuity of the proceedings of fixing the exporting gas pipeline of Egyptian natural gas, after the repeated bombings since the Egyptian January 25 Revolution. “I can't completely secure Sinai. There is coordination with relevant security authorities but we can't prevent all terrorist attacks. There are continuous negotiations with the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Company to change the selling prices of exported natural gas to Israel,” Ghorab told Youm7. Arabic here
