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Israel's Key Energy Provider, Egypt, Cuts Off All Natural Gas Supplies
Two months ago, we warned that while the world had decided to blissfully move on from last year's topic #1, the MENA revolutions, and specifically the massive power vacuum left in their wake, things in the region were far from fixed. Quite the contrary, and as we added back then "it is very likely that the Mediterranean region, flanked on one side by the broke European countries of Greece, Italy, Spain (and implicitly Portugal), and on the other by the unstable powder keg of post-revolutionary Libya and Egypt, will likely become quite active yet again. Only this time, in addition to social and economic upheavals, a religious flavor may also be added to the mix". Yet nobody cared as after a year of daily videos showing Molotov Cocktails dropping like flies, people had simply gotten habituated and needed some other source of excitement. Nobody cared also when a week ago Art Cashin warned that the hidden geopolitcal risk is not Spain but Egypt. Today, Egypt just reminded at least one country why perhaps caution about the instability caused by having a military in charge of the most populous Arabic country and the one boasting "the Canal", should have been heeded after Egypt just announced that it is cutting off its natural gas supplies to Israel, which just so happens relies on Egypt for 40% of its energy needs.
From Reuters:
Egypt's energy companies have terminated a long-term deal to supply Israel with gas after the cross-border pipeline sustained months of sabotage since a revolt last year, a stakeholder in the deal said on Sunday.
Ampal-American Israel Corporation, a partner in the East Mediterreanean Gas Company (EMG), which operates the pipeline, said the Egyptian companies involved had notified EMG they were "terminating the gas and purchase agreement".
And judging by the sound and fury emanating from Israel the move was hardly expected:
The company said in a statement that the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation and Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company had notified them of the decision, adding that "EMG considers the termination attempt unlawful and in bad faith, and consequently demanded its withdrawal".
It said EMG, Ampal, and EMG's other international shareholders were "considering their options and legal remedies as well as approaching the various governments".
Before the sabotage, Egypt supplied about 40 percent of Israel's natural gas, which is the country's main energy source.
Suddenly Israel may have bigger things to worry about that whether or not to leak its Iran invasion plas on national TV:
Israeli officials have said the country was at risk of facing summer power outages due to energy shortages.
Companies invested in the Israeli-Egyptian venture have taken a hit from numerous explosions of the cross-border pipeline and are seeking compensation from the Egyptian government of billions of dollars.
Ampal and two other companies have sought $8 billion in damages from Egypt for not safeguarding their investment.
Furthermore, if the Egyptian move is indeed an escalation in strategic alliance shifts in the region, it could have truly huge implications:
The Egyptian decision is a potential blow to the country's ties with Israel, already tested by the toppling of Israeli ally President Hosni Mubarak a year ago.
Egypt was the first of two Arab countries to sign a peace trety with Israel, in 1979, followed by Jordan in 1994.a
Has the country's endless warmongering calls for a preemptive war against Iran backfired epically? We won't know for a while, but what we do know is that any government left in the power of military elites, is, how should we say it, unstable... for the simple reason that a military regime tends to require war to remind people why it is in charge. And the Egyptian "transitional" military government appears pretty much set to become permanent. Again from Reuters:
Ex-foreign minister Amr Moussa, a leading contender for Egypt's presidency, said on Sunday he would give the military a voice in key policies via a national security council, a move to reassure ruling generals about their status after a power transfer.
Moussa, a self-described liberal nationalist whose main election rivals are Islamists, also said Egypt needed a president with lobbying skills to work effectively with the Islamist-dominated parliament and other institutions after decades of autocratic government.
Which means add one more election to the already surging roster of short-term catalysts now including France, Greece, Germany and, as of yesterday, the Netherlands:
Egypt's presidential vote that starts on May 23-24 will mark the final stage of a transition to civilian rule from generals who took charge after Hosni Mubarak was ousted last year.
Unfortunately for Israel, either outcome will likely be a choice between a rock and a hard place, as the country appears to be rapidly alienating its one core catalytic long-term ally in the region.
Moussa, 75, said the national security council, to be chaired by the president, would include senior cabinet ministers plus top military officers. It would have a broad national security brief, he told a news conference.
"It has to consider all issues pertaining to national security and not only issues of defence or war, etc, but issues like water, issues like relations with neighbours," said Moussa, a former head of the Arab League.
"(The council) will be a power house on those issues of major priority for the national life," he added.
Other candidates, including one Islamist, have made similar suggestions but Moussa's proposal and his plans as a whole are more detailed than most.
...
The army has said it will hand over power and return to barracks by July 1, leaving the new president in charge.
But various comments from army officials, usually in private, or from the military-appointed cabinet have indicated that the military wants a longer term role in protecting broad interests that range from businesses to national security, and wants to guide state affairs that could impact them.
The only question Israel may want to answer now is whether it wants to get cozy with Russia, whose nat gas it may suddenly be very, very attractive. And for that to happen, it means a huge softening in its anti-Iran tone, which in turn will have a huge impact on regional geopolitics, and specifically the risk of war in Iran, and thus the price of Brent. All of this, of course assumes, Israel does not immediately retaliate against Egypt, recently a big recipient of US aid, not to mention tear gas, and start a pre-emptive two front pre-war...
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Africa Sitting on groundwater reserves
http://www.news24.com/SciTech/News/Africa-sitting-on-groundwater-reserve...
[snip]
Researchers from the British Geological Survey and University College London have for the first time mapped the aquifers, or groundwater, across the continent and the amount they hold.
"The largest groundwater volumes are found in the large sedimentary aquifers in the North African countries Libya, Algeria, Egypt and Sudan," the scientists said in their paper.
Not for the first time. Gadafi already mapped it, started building pipes and was killed for it - and for gold & oil.
And THAT is the reason for the Arab Spring revolutions! It had nothing to do with OIL. Libya sits on top of the Blue Water Aquifer - one of the largest reservoirs of POTABLE water in North Africa, if not THE largest!!! Everybody seems to think that oil is the reason for the season. YOU CAN'T DRINK OIL. Water is ONE of THREE POPULATION RESOURCE CONTROLS. Without water, you die. A lot of authoritarians are figuring this out!!
Anybody that knows anything about Israel learns to hate it. It's Goyim v. The Jew World Order.
anyone who thinks that this statement above is just mindless racism should take good hard look at Michael Hoffman's works:
http://www.revisionisthistory.org/
You know, there's even Jews inside Israel that hate what Israel is doing.
http://www.whywerefuse.org/
Excuse but isn't there a worldwide glut of natural gas in the world these days? Egypt may have been the easiest way for Israel to get gas but it's far from the only choice right now. Besides, Israel will has its own gasfields running in a couple of years anyhow.....
Now sure what all the hype is about but it sure got all the lying jew-haters up in their usual lather to bring up their usual lies and pet subjects.
Natural gas is regional unless you liquefy & ship. There's no glut of people willing to ship to Israel.
So liquefy and ship.......Last I checked Israel's not landlocked.
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So who's going to ship? Nobody in North America. The only LNG export terminal on the continent is in Nikiski, Alaska, and its product is already contracted to Japan.
What? Not willing to build a new terminal with infrastructure to liquify the gas and get it there?
Must be more Jew hate.
Possible solution to the problem: Cut off all power to the Gaza strip - which means NO gas, NO electricity, NO water - allow only 1 hour a day, every other day. War is war! Block food going into Gaza. Let them "eat" the missiles they fire at Israel!!! If the Muslims in Egypt care so much about their fellow Muslims in Gaza, then they can renegotiate the contract with Israel for several years, giving Israel time to develop their own gas resources. This will show the World how "caring" the Muslim Brotherhood is in Egypt! However, it seems that most of the Muslims in the Middle East do NOT care much for those in the Gaza strip and use them as pawns. Israel is NOT without bargaining chips.
Fighting with one hand behind one's back does NOT win wars! Someone comes at you with a stick, you use a bigger stick! "Don't Tread On Me" - the Gadsen Flag!
Hey dummy, Gaza is not Egypt.
The deal's done - Israel must bow to Iran and Russia or suffer huge irreversible consequences.
The mirror image of a Jew hater is a Jewish hater.
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How is that different from current policy?
What an insane and bizarre comment- and you use "sensible person" as a tag?
Egypt stops sending natgas to Israel because Israel wont pay them, and you advocate cutting off the Gaza strip as a response to Egypt not sending free gas??? What the hell does one have to do with the other- thats like saying if Germany got mad at Russia for not sending energy that Germany refused to pay for the Germans should blockade Greece under the idea that theyre all Orthodox.
You should consider changing your handle to "fucking lunatic". "Drooling idiot" would also suffice.
Guilty by association is a good seller in US citizenism.
See for example the lynching trend and the mob spirit developed by US citizens living in the US of A.
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Saving face by offuscation is even better seller in Chinese citizenism.
Natural Gas? I thought Israel worked on hot air. Maybe now they'll do the right thing and turn their illegal, rogue nuclear weapons program into a power generation program that exists under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, for peaceful purposes.
Like Iran's nuclear program, for example.
Imaginations at ZH are running wild.
Egypt is merely jockeying for a better trade deal with Israel (and playing to the home crowd by deceptively seeming "tough on Israel"). The "Arab Spring" brought little change in Egypt. The US-paid military still run the show in Egypt.
There will certainly be no lasting "cut-off" of natural gas supply.
Funny that this time Egypt has 1000 abram tanks ready to pound Israel...Also a lot of F-16s... all supplied by the US.
Finance and arm both sides and you'll make a killing! The Rothschild motto!
Even with all this hardware, Egypt will get his ass pounded heavily... even if Hezbollah, Iran and Syria were to join in.
The US got Israel's back and worst case scenario, Israel got nukes.
one nuke = no route for those tanks
oh, and no Suez Canal either, which could get rather inconvenient
Unless the US is supplying the pilots, I wouldn't worry too much about those F-16's.
"Finance and arm both sides and you'll make a killing! The Rothschild motto!"
exactly! People today - ignorant, uninformed, hate-mongered Amerikans today who believe that the Sulzberger NY Times and Meyer/Graham Washington Post are "LIBERAL" because, well, they put up a facade claiming to be - tend to DISMISS the power of the R's based "MONEY POWER" because, they will tell you, the R's ran out of their world controlling power back in the early 1900s.
BUT! WHO was CONTROLLING the U.S. (so called) 'Federal' Reserve, established 1913 (which, TYPICAL R's fashion, promptly drove THE ENTIRE U.S. economy into the DITCH of "credit-bubble > credit bubble BUST > NO ONE HAS ANY MONEY!" GREAT DEPRESSION just over a decade later?)
(In the 1920s America was still a majority agricultural nation... and the FARM DEPRESSION took hold in America's breadbasket just after the end of WWI stopped big government purchases of food & crops to supply wartime armies... while the farmers were still STUCK with their WARTIME CROP EXPANSION LOANS.) http://www.iptv.org/iowapathways/mypath.cfm?ounid=ob_000060
And WHO was PROFITING from FINANCING WARTIME INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION, BOTH 1914-1918, and all through the WWII and Cold War years? (The "money power" BEHIND the NY/Wall St. bankers, that's who!) (The same ruthless bastards who made millions financing WWI, were now FORECLOSING ON American farmers who had fed & supplied the Allied armies to victory!)
The R's family might not be the UNCONTESTED "Money Power" they were up to and after WWI.... but they and their "money power" allies are NOW DIVERSIFIED,
...now they have THEIR OWN NUCLEAR ARMED STATE acting as their home base, ON TOP of all their France, England, USA, Canada, Holland, Belgium, (etc.) profit center WEALTH EXTRACTION bases developed and built up over the previous 2 centuries.
Egyptians are on a tear. I read they were murdering Coptics by the handful here and there.....I wonder if Hillary and Sarkozy will go in an "protect the civilians?"
its the tragedy of the Pax Americana construct, they befriended the rabid ones and beheaded the secular ones.
Never fear, that Zionest Whore Ms. Hillary Clinton will fly off to Egypt and threaten to bomb them into the stone age if they don't reinstate Israel's gas supply.
Also, note in the article that because of attacks on the pipeline the gas contract is being voided. Simply put, the people of Egypt ar attacking the pipeline to prevent Egypt fullfilling Israel's gas needs.
Israel had a good thing going with Egypt as it's allie and prtector of it's African front. Now the protector has become a threat. Do not underestimate how big of a change this is to Israel's position as the military power that decides the fate of all it's neighbor states.
Egypt is now outside of Israel's control. This puts Israel into a very bad position should it attack Iran, I would expect Egyptian people to react very badly should Israel attack another muslim nation. Syria, Lebanon or Iran, or all three. Ans should the USA pile on whith massive air strikes and mass killing of Muslim civilians, well then the people of Egypt will be far out front of their government in their anti Israeli actions.
Yeah, and the Egyptians will do what? That's what I thought.
Hopefully everyone will leave the pyramids alone. That's what's really at stake here.
Didn't I read this in the esteemed NYTimes or Washington Post? I guess not, so it does not exist .....
yea why cant we sell this G-bus natural gas
Where there is Islam there is hate and violence and destabilization. The strongmen we worked with were bad, the new strongmen are worse.
It might mean that there is an element in the U.S. that is simply getting tired of the Israeli bull shit. There was quite a bit of evidence that showed that Egypt (as well as tunisia, Libya, and Syria) 'arab spring' was orchestrated by Western powers.
There is no need for ad honimum attacks, or being rude. My postings will always be polite, and I will NEVER use profanity to attack another poster. It is a waste of time at the very least. Let us all hope that posters here use common courtesy and politely disagree with another poster. ZeroHedge is a valuable resource of financial and other news which is why it is one of my favorite sites.
That being said, regarding my previous post, Israel provides water and electricity to Gaza Strip, and I DO realize that Gaza is NOT in Egypt. However, some politicians in the USA and Europe do not want the Muslims in Gaza to suffer, and one would hope that BEHIND THE SCENES they would tell the fractured government in Egypt to "reconsider" its position of cutting off gas supplies to Israel, and renegotiate the contract. America is still providing Egypt with much needed cash, and since "money talks", one would hope that if America said it would perhaps cut the funds going to Egpyt, one would hope Egypt would think again about the gas contract with Israel.
There are always political forces at work behind the scenes or which we ordinary citizens are not informed.
So explain again why you want the Muslims in Gaza to suffer.
Do you also want the Christians in Gaza to suffer? Why or why not? Please explain.
Thank you.
The idiots could import gas from Iran.
The perceivable cracks of Pax Americana; how can you hold the Oil Patch together having built a sixty year regional strategy on :
1° A dictator in Iran, we know how that performed. Now the US wants to take out a theocracy they indirectly helped promote by their heavy handed criminal play from 1953-1979 in this huge producer of Oil patch. Out of the frying pan into the fire!
2° A total alignment behind Wahabbit kingdom, the most fundamentalist sunni clique in the region, who have fed the radical islamist pipeline for fifty years with their oil wealth, in Pakistan, Sudan, Algeria etc. etc. etc.
3° A support of a rabidly ethnic and antisocial construct of a police state of Zionist bend in Israel, the new Crusader state defending the Oil patch from a) rabid nationalism aka Nasser/Baas, b) rabid Islamism.
How can a hegemonical power play to control the KEY commodity achieve all these objectives with such a head up the ass strategy? Concocted by dear Henry K and all those who followed on Petrodollar staircase.
What it has achieved is a greater dependency on PEAK arab oil since Reaganomics began, instead of seeing the writing on the wall as announced in 1978 by the Shah himself : we are running out of oil, Mr West, its time to change your paradigm.
He was right and Reagan was wrong when he said to King Fahd in 1982 : JUST OPEN THAT DAMN SPIGGOT FULL THROTTLE AND STFU. Bedrock of Reaganomics power play in Oil patch. After all what could King Fahd say then?
* All his stashed wealth was in the hands of western banks as was his oil production and distribution controlled by seven sisters.
* He and the USA were funding the ten year war of spear carrier Saddam against new local villain, Khomeiny's Iran.
He was totally stymied by Pax Americana priorities. Whence the rising resentment in the more "islamic" and "patriotic" Saudi circles to this constant US butt bashing behind the curtain of their kingdom during the 80/90 NWO period; it led to 9/11 once the Afghan anti-Soviet mujahiddin caper was over. Those mujahiddin Stinger missile carriers became front liners in the new fight against the US satan of GWB.
History is inexorable in its play with a nation that takes short cuts; now the chickens are coming home to roost.
The biggest crime of PAx Americana to its future generations on both sides of the Pond of western world, those it was ostensibly supposed to protect, is that we have ALL become JUNKIES to the cheap arab oil mantra, which will now go inevitably to CHindia. As the first world goes bankrupt due to Reaganonmics fed shenanigans on monetary hubris and its labour arbitrage outsourcing delusion; all to benefit the 1% kleptocracy of happy few.
What happened to elitist thinking in DC ? Has it morphed totally into Caesar's purple and is the republic truly dead in Jefferson land?
Has it morphed totally into Caesar's purple and is the republic truly dead in Jefferson land?
Well, yes.
good, informative comment. As Paul Craig Roberts frequently informs us, ALL the RADICAL ("fundamentalist") SUNNI Gulf OIL DICTATOR REGIMES, effectively TAKE THEIR MARCHING ORDERS from their ostensible "enemies," the LIKUDNIKS - israelis! - who effectively rule America's foreign policy with an iron & bloody fist.
But you need to add a layer of sublety/sophistication to your "Jeffersonian Republic" model... for it was the DESPISED (by Jeffersonians) Alexander Hamilton who put Jefferson in the White House (Hamilton's support for Jefferson, and against fellow New Yorker Aaron Burr, in the disputed election of 1800 cost him his life in a duel shortly later), and furthermore, it was Federalist Hamilton's FUNDING of the US government (as 1st Treasury Secretary) that enabled Jefferson's greatest accomplishment, the purchase, from Napoleon, of the entire Louisiana Territory without a single shot fired in anger.
Even more important, those who advocate the Jefferson model of "Republicanism" forget that Jefferson was a SLAVE OWNER, who USED SLAVES and supported the SLAVERY SYSTEM, which led to wealthy slave owners, MONOPOLY style, gobbling up all the smaller farmers around them.
That was exactly why Abraham Lincoln's father had to leave Kentucky - the wealthy slave plantation owners BRIBED the local judges to allow them to STEAL the land-holdings of pioneer farmers, legally, in courtrooms once the frontier had moved west, and small farmers were at the mercy of courts, sheriffs, and judges as "the law" moved in. Lincoln's father sold his Kentucky farm at a discount, before his frontier land claim was crushed by powerful, connected slave-owners in court.
It was Hamilton who encouraged and accelerated the industrialization of the north, which, ironically, created the HIGHER WAGES factory workers who gave America a skilled, industrial proto- middle-class that we identify with "Republicanism" today. On eve of Civil War, SLAVES were THE #1. MEASURE OF WEALTH IN ALL of America, by a large factor - including all railroads, factories, real-estate, and ships put together! and slavery was expanding.
Today's "gwot" DIMINISHMENT of, attack on CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS is actually a REVERSION TO prior status in America: under slavery (and then for 100 years of Segregation) LARGE SWATHS of Americans had NO rights; and on eve of Civil War, if you were a Southerner who objected to the planter's desire for seccession, you had NO rights, either (you were labelled a traitor).
And of course President John Adam's and the Federalists' "ALIEN & SEDITION" laws that Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans so despised, were REPEATED under so-called "Progressive" DEMOCRAT President Woodrow Wilson, who used them to CENSOR anti-WWI speech, and IMPRISON his political opponent, anti-war presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, AFTER WWI was over !
(AND, ZeroHedgers should note, the "Trading with the Enemy" provisions of the 1918 WARTIME "Sedition Act" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918 was used by so-called "liberal" "DEMOCRATIC" President Frankly D. Roosevelt and his so-called "liberal" Treasury Secretary, Henry Morganthau, to authorize that most "un-free" of presidential DICTATES, the GOLD CONFISCATION ACT of 1933 - long after wartime WWI was over! Caught possessing gold in defiance of the draconian presidential decree, the Federal government could SEND YOU TO PRISON!)
When today's "liberal," progressive, and "big-tent" (minority inclusive) Democrats host their annual party dinner, the JEFFERSON-JACKSON dinner (in Democratic Party locations all across the country) every year, they are celebrating and honoring TWO SLAVE OWNERS who ENCOURAGED THE EXPANSION OF SLAVERY - the diametric opposite of "egalitarian small farmer Republicanism" of Jeffersonian myth!
Pax Judea coming http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTkWugDHrTc . Imran Hosein told about Arab Uprising years before. Basically Israel will be the ruling State as opposed to US.
squirrel fight and then doggstyle in this piece with a groundhog watching
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32KasR-jafU
squirrel representin for tha dead homie against some playa hatin crows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sOw3mCz4Oc