Nederlande Gasunie NV subsidiary Gasunie Trade and Supply has unexpected notified the Ministry of National Infrastructures that it wishes to withdraw from Israel’s natural gas pipeline project, in which hundreds of millions of dollars will be invested over the coming years. Dutch company Gasunie is managing and supervising the project, and has been selected to operate the Israel Electric Corporation’s (IEC) undersea pipeline.
Sources inform “Globes” that Gasunie, which has been involved in the project for several years as a special advisor to the Ministry of National Infrastructures, decided to withdraw from the project after learning that part of the project would be based on the US standard, not the Dutch standard.
Gasunie, one of Europe’s largest natural gas companies, was particularly surprised when the Ministry of National Infrastructures decided in recent days to grant preliminary approval for a 30-km pipeline built by the Yam Thetis partnership. This section of pipeline, which leads from Yam Thetis’s gas fields off the Ashkelon shore to the IEC receiving station, was constructed according to the US standard.
The ministry decided in the past few days to grant initial authorization for the project, after a further examination by US company BCI, which found that the pipeline met the standard in principle. Gas cannot be delivered to the IEC without authorization for this pipeline.
Before this dramatic development, Gasunie was slated to finalize the operation of the undersea pipeline with the ministry in the coming days. The IEC is due to build the $100 million pipeline next year.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on December 22, 2003