After months of deliberations, the board of directors of Israel’s state-owned power provider, the Israel Electric Corporation, has decided not to buy its natural gas supply exclusively from an Israeli supplier, but instead it will purchase 55 percent of the supply from a corporation that will pipe the gas in from Egypt.
The company is negotiating to buy the remaining 45 percent from an Israeli supplier.
The likely candidate is the Tethys Sea Partnership, which discovered a major field of natural quantities off the Ashkelon shore, and is owned by Israel-based Delek Drilling and Avner and the American company Samedan.
Also in the bidding is a partnership involving British Gas, which has discovered gas off the Palestinian Gaza Strip.
With the decision by its board now in the bag, the Israel Electric Corporation is now free to begin negotiating with the EMG corporation to purchase 1.7 billion cubic meters of natural gas. EMG.
EMG is jointly owned by the Egyptian government, Egyptian businessman Hussein Salem, Israeli businessman Yossi Maiman, and several Egyptian institutional investors.
With news of the decision of the Israel Electric Corporation, oil share prices on the Israel Stock Exchange plummeted on Sunday.
Avner participation units were down 34.8 percent on a NIS 6.1 million turnover and Delek Drilling fell by 32.3 percent. Isramco, which is a participant in the British Gas partnership, saw an 11.1 percent fall in its gas price.
During the past several months, the Israeli natural gas producers have waged a costly campaign in the printed and electronic mass media to sway public opinion against a decision to buy gas from a foreign supplier.
While economists argued that increasing the level of competition in the natural gas market would result in cheaper electricity for consumers, the gas producers warned about establishing a reliance on a foreign supplier who may regulate the flow of gas according to the state of political relationship between the two countries. – (Albawaba-MEBG)
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
