The prime ministers of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan are expected to meet Sunday in the Jordanian capital, Amman, to sign the second phase of a major natural gas contract.
The 36-inch-diameter pipe already runs from Al-‘Arish in Egypt to Jordan’s Aqaba. The second phase of the project will carry the gas from an Egyptian company in Aqaba to the A-Rahab district in northern Jordan, along the Syrian border.
The following phase will then focus on transferring gas from the Jordanian border to Syria and Lebanon and from there to Turkey and Cyprus.
When completed, the total length of the pipe will be 600 kilometers, or 375 miles, at the cost of $800m., according to the Lebanese daily Al-Mustaqbal.
The project is an attempt to increase Arab economic cooperation and is significantly important for Jordan, since it increases the kingdom’s energy sources, supplying power stations and industries with clean fuel for a reasonable price.
The project is expected to continue for 30 years, at which point the pipe will be transferred to the ownership of the countries through which it runs, the London paper A-Sharq Al-Awsat reported.
No Israelis are participating in the project, nor will Israel benefit from it, a Jordanian source informed A-Sharq Al-Awsat.
The report added that the Lebanese Minister for Water and Energy Ayoub Hamid said Lebanon wishes to use varying sources of gas including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Qatar, in the hope that at some point the country will be capable of producing gas itself.