AMMAN, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) -- Jordan on Thursday signed an agreement with Egypt on resuming Egyptian gas supply to the kingdom in early 2019.
Under the deal, Egypt will provide Jordan with 10 percent of its daily need of gas as of next year, Jordanian Minister of Energy Hala Zawati said in a statement.
Jordan needs 330 million cubic feet of natural gas per day for power generation, according to the minister.
Egypt will compensate Jordan for the quantities of gas it failed to deliver to Jordan after the pipeline between the two countries were sabotaged by the militant group Islamic State (IS).
The minister added that Jordan and Egypt held talks in Cairo Thursday on providing gas to Jordanian industrial facilities.
In 2004, Egypt started providing 250 million of cubic feet of gas per day to Jordan. In 2009, there was a large decline in supply, while in 2011 the supply was completely halted after the pipeline in Sinai was bombed by the IS several times.
After the halt in supply, Jordan resorted to heavy fuel import for power generation which increased burden on the budget and resulted in losses of about 8 billion U.S. dollars.
Jordan started diversifying its energy resources and built a terminal for liquidized natural gas to import sufficient quantities of gas for power generation.
