Militants blew up an Egyptian
pipeline terminal that supplies gas to Israel in a pre-dawn
attack, the state-run Middle East News Agency reported today,
citing eyewitnesses.
The station in the northern Sinai peninsula was burning and
flames could be seen from a distance, the Cairo-based news
agency said. A station guard and his family were injured in the
blast and a security cordon was set up in the area, MENA said.
The blast is the fourth attack on the pipeline since the
start of the popular revolt in Egypt that led to the toppling of
President Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11. Israel gets about 40 percent
of its gas from Egypt.
Egypt holds Africa’s third-largest gas reserves, with 78
trillion cubic feet (2.19 trillion cubic meters), according to
data compiled by Bloomberg. It exported 650 billion cubic feet
of gas in 2009, of which 30 percent went through the pipeline to
Israel or via a separate link to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon,
according to the U.S. Energy Department.
