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. Shares in Ampal-American Israel (AMPL) Corp., which owns a 12.5 percent stake in the pipeline, plunged to their lowest since January 2009 after the last attack on July 4. During the uprising against Mubarak, some protesters demanded that the government stop exporting gas to Israel, with which the North African country signed a peace treaty in 1979. The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s biggest opposition group under Mubarak, repeatedly criticized his regime for exporting to Israel at prices that were below market rates. To contact the reporter on this story: Mahmoud Kassem in Cairo at mkassem1@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Riad Hamade at rhamade@bloomberg.net; Peter Hirschberg at phirschberg@bloomberg.net

Source