Officials said the military regime in Egypt has refused to renew
operations of the Arab Gas Pipeline, which supplied neighboring Israel.
They said the renewal was held up by insurgency threats to the pipeline in
the Sinai Peninsula as well as a dispute over prices.
"We have to have security for the line," Egyptian Oil Minister Abdullah
Ghorab said. "There have been two accidents and we need to secure the line."
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In remarks on June 2, Ghorab said the Oil Ministry was reviewing a
timetable to renew supplies to Israel, Middle East Newsline reported. He said the Egyptian national gas
company was negotiating with an Israeli-Egyptian contractor, but raised the
prospect of international arbitration over prices.
"If we don't agree we will go to arbitration," Ghorab said. "This was
exactly our understanding in Egypt of how this relationship should be when
we got into a renegotiation process for revising Egyptian export gas prices
for
our long-time contracts that have been accomplished a long time ago under
completely different world market conditions."