RAMALLAH, February 16, 2015 (WAFA) – Jordan will sign Monday a
letter of intent to import natural gas from Palestine, stated a Jordanian
minister.
Jordan’s Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Muhammad Hamed said
his country would sign a letter of intent to import natural gas from the
offshore Gaza Marine field.
Hamed made his remarks on the margins of a meeting with Palestinian
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of
National Economy Muhammad Mustafa as well as Minister of Energy Omar Kittaneh
in Ramallah to discuss the details of a deal.
Responding to a question on whether his country has substituted
Palestinian gas for Israeli gas, Hamed noted that his country has several
options to import natural gas to provide Jordan with much-needed energy,
including importing it from Palestine.
According to Interfax Natural Gas Daily (Interfax Energy), a news
outlet that provides a natural perspective on natural gas news and events, Jordan
is hoping to close a deal to import up to 4.25 million cubic metres per day of
gas from the 32 billion cubic meter offshore Gaza Marine field, which lies 36
kilometers off the coast of Gaza, by the end of February.
Jordan has halted negotiations to purchase
natural gas from Leviathan, the largest offshore Israeli gas reserve, after the
deal sparked controversy and triggered protests in November 2014. Seventy five Jordanian parliamentarians signed onto a
petition expressing their opposition to the deal.
The Gaza Marine reserve was
discovered eighteen years ago. It contains over 32 billion cubic meters and is
owned by British Gas Group (60%), which also operates the reserve, Consolidated
Contractors Company (CCC) (30%), and the Palestinian Authority (10%).
British Gas Group and
its partner, Consolidated Contractors Company, the largest construction company
in the Middle East based in Athens and owned by Palestinian-Lebanese Sabbagh
and Khoury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25-year
agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority.
According to the Israeli
business newspaper Globes, Jordan would import 1.5 to 1.8 billion cubic meters
of gas annually.
Although he declined to answer
a question about the size of the deal, Mustafa affirmed that it would generate
considerable budgetary revenues.
Hamed was recently quoted by
the Jordanian Times as expecting a deal would be signed with British Gas, which
has the rights to develop the offshore Gaza natural gas fields. However, he failed
to provide any details about the gas imports’ prices.
He stressed his country’s strategic
need to diversify its sources of the cheaper and cleaner gas as supplies from
Egypt remain halted because the pipeline, which had been bombed several
times, has not been fixed yet.
“We need natural gas for power
generation because it is much cheaper than diesel and heavy fuel that we are
currently using in the process,” the minister was quoted.
K.F/M.H
