After a
Sinai gas pipeline bombing on Wednesday morning halted the flow of
natural gas from Egypt to both Israel and Jordan, experts say that Israel will
be able to fulfill its energy needs, but not without both financial and
environmental costs, at least in the short term.
The pipeline exploded on
Wednesday after “an unknown armed gang” of saboteurs bombed a segment that runs
through Egypt’s northern Sinai near the town of El-Arish, a security source told
Reuters.
RELATED:The gas supply we can no longer rely on ‘No such thing’ as global market rate for natural gas' Marketplace: The Natural Gas Solution This latest attack follows the February 5 explosion at a
terminal in the area that left Israel and Jordan without its Egyptian natural
gas supply for five weeks, and an additional attempt at the end of March in
which the explosive failed to detonate.
The bombed pipeline delivers gas
not only to Israel and Jordan, but also to Syria via a pipeline that runs
through Jordan, where it is also reexported to Lebanon.
Meanwhile,
Egypt’s public prosecutor is currently investigating six officials from the
Mubarak government, including former energy minister Sameh Fahmy, on charges for
“squandering public funds” by permitting East Mediterranean Gas’s transactions with Israel at
a price below global market rates.
“The Israel Electric Corporation has
the means to guarantee a continuous supply of electricity to meet the country’s
demands for all of its users, regardless of the cessation in the Egyptian gas
supply,” said Dr. Amit Mor, CEO and energy specialist at the Eco Energy
consulting firm. “IEC will do this by utilizing the Ashkelon and Hadera coal
plants at maximum capacity.”
Coal currently fuels the production of 62
percent of Israel’s electricity, while natural gas accounts for 36% – two-fifths
of which is supplied by Egypt, according to Mor.
Senior officials at the
IEC convened on Wednesday for a discussion headed by Chairman Yiftah Ron-Tal and
CEO Eli Glickman to appraise the situation and determine potential alternative
methods for running power plants, including the use of petroleum, the
corporation said in a statement.
“We do not expect that as a result of
the latest event there will be any drops in the supply of electricity from our
power plants,” said National Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau at a press
conference on Wednesday afternoon.
“The IEC is well-equipped to deal with
such incidents.”
While he agreed that the IEC is completely prepared to
handle the situation, Mor said that the current case will be slightly more
difficult to manage than that of February “because the demand for electricity
during these upcoming days and weeks is significantly higher than the demand for
electricity back in the winter,” due to increased use of air
conditioning.
“It was a mild winter,” he said.
In addition to
making extra use of the coal plants, the IEC will probably convert several of
the stations that currently run on natural gas to operate on heavy fuel oil and
diesel instead, Mor predicted.
Though sufficient to fulfill Israel’s
energy needs, these switches to coal and oil will cost the IEC an additional
$1.5 million-$2m. per day, however, according to Mor.
“Coal prices
have increased significantly in the past few weeks, due to an increasing demand
for coal in China and in the international market. Now coal is more costly than
the Egyptian gas,” he said.
Egyptian gas currently costs Israel somewhere
between $4.10- 4.50 per million British thermal units (there are 6 million
British thermal units in one barrel of oil), while heavy fuel oil costs $20 per
million and diesel costs $25 per million, Mor explained.
“[Diesel] is six
times higher than the price of Egyptian gas,” he continued.
“At the end
of the day, we, the electricity consumers, will pay that additional cost through
the price of electricity.
“If the halt of the gas supply is short, then
the increase in the electricity price will be marginal, but if the halt is long
or permanent, then the resultant increase in the electricity price will be
significant.”
Meanwhile, burning excess oil and coal also has dangerous
ecological effects, experts stressed.
“Burning coal and fuel oil has
adverse environment impacts because of the higher emissions of sulfur dioxide,
nitrogen oxide and particulate metals, which have negative health effects, as
well as carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming and climate change,”
Mor said.
“Although heavy fuel oil is significantly cheaper than diesel,
due to environmental reasons, the priority should be to utilize the diesel-based
power plants before the utilization of the heavy fuelbased power
plants.”
Though acknowledging that Israel “will have to resort to these
energy sources to some extent,” Landau assured journalists that the IEC and the
government would remain “sensitive to our environment” at Wednesday’s press
conference.
“The main problem is the cost,” said Brenda Shaffer, an
expert on energy policy and management at the University of Haifa. “You have
coal and diesel as alternatives. But they’re costly and they pollute. In the
long term, it’s better to pay more for your gas but make sure that it’s
stable.”
An additional short-term alternative for the IEC will
potentially be an increased use of Israel’s own current natural gas supply, the
Mari-B field off the coast of Ashkelon, according to Mor.
But “faster
extraction of Mari-B will cause a more rapid depletion of this gas field,” he
said, noting that Israel could then risk facing a gap period between when Mari-B
runs out and the new Tamar field off the coast of Haifa will be
ready.
Mor also felt that in both the intermediate and long term, Israel
could benefit from installing semipermanent offshore Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)
regasification units.
Such an anchored tanker “could supply a constant
supply of gas in times of cessation of the gas supply due to geopolitical,
commercial or technical reasons,” according to Mor.
“We need a permanent
solution of a permanent backup supplier, like an insurance company,” Mor
said.
While Shaffer said she didn’t have an opinion on the shortterm use
of an LNG supply, she felt that “a long-term, regular LNG facility makes
absolutely no sense.
“I don’t know any countries that have natural gas
reserves that import LNG,” she said, adding that it would be impossible to
establish a “competitive” market in such a small, local setting for natural gas
trade, and that the solution for future technical problems is making sure to
have many “redundancies” in the system.
“You have to build redundancies
in the system, multiple entry points,” she said of the future Tamar field.
“You’d have to improve the diesel supply as a backup and make sure you have a
lot of dual fuel plants, like with coal.”
Despite the current situation,
as well as the February explosion, Landau expressed confidence that the deal
with Egypt is stable and that gas flow will continue as normal once the pipeline
is fixed.
“We wish to impress upon everybody that the Israeli government
sees the peace agreement and the gas agreement as a cornerstone to our future
economic agreements [with Egypt],” Landau said at the press conference,
emphasizing a need to “maintain our good relations and our continued peace and
economic activities with Egypt.”
He said he expected that the gas deal
would continue to be considered a fair agreement by all parties, and noted that
Israel pays twice what Jordan, Syria and Lebanon pay for the Egyptian
gas.
“We think the deal we have with Egypt is good,” Landau
said.
Shaffer, on the other hand, maintained that the deal with Egypt as
a whole is “an unstable supply source” and said that Wednesday’s explosion
“shows even more so why it can’t go on.
“I think it is going to have some
big policy implications for Israel,” Shaffer said. “If [government officials]
were hoping to bridge the gap with Egyptian gas until Mari- B came online,
they’ll have to realize it won’t work.”
Even if the explosion in February
and on Wednesday had not occurred, Shaffer said she felt that Egypt would not
really have a sufficient ability to maintain its export commitments unless it
changed its domestic gas subsidy policies, and added that “the best thing” for
Egypt is to sacrifice its deals with Israel and Jordan.
“This is probably
going to be a bigger crisis for Jordan than for Israel, because we have Yam
Tethys [Mari-B] and all these redundancies,” she continued, noting, however,
that with a reduction of natural gas use in Jordan and a resultant increase in
pollution, Israel will suffer as well.
“We get that pollution too,” she
said.