The energy sector has contributed to reviving the economic relations between the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Egypt, through tripartite and bilateral agreements.
Jordan suffers from weak energy supplies, due to the lack of discoveries in the oil and natural gas sectors, over the past decades, which made it depend on imports to meet more than 96% of its annual need.
Jordan and Egypt
Last November, Jordan and Egypt agreed to enhance the electrical interconnection between the two countries and raise the mutual energy between them from 550 megawatts to 1,000 megawatts, or 2,000 megawatts in the future.
According to the Jordanian Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, the agreement to increase power to 1,000 megawatts or even 2,000 will help expand the electrical systems in the two countries to reach new markets, thus reducing costs on their electrical systems.
Egypt has been able to raise its electrical capacity since 2014, when these capacities have become exportable, and it has an ambitious plan to raise the percentage of renewable energy from its electrical capacity to 35% by 2035.
Egypt currently has very good reserve capacities of electrical energy, while the Egyptian government announced early this year that it is proceeding with electrical interconnection projects with neighboring countries,” noting that the electrical linkage with Jordan enhances the electrical energy exchange system in the region.
Jordan and Egypt have exchanged electrical energy since 1999, and the Jordanian electrical network is connected to the Egyptian electrical network with a 400 kilovolt submarine cable that extends across the Gulf of Aqaba with a length of 13 kilometers and a capacity of 550 megawatts.
While in 2018, Jordan and Egypt signed agreements to supply the Kingdom with regarding half of the electrical system’s needs of natural gas for 2019, which was implemented throughout that year and contributed to providing affordable energy to Jordan.
The agreement at the time included amendments to the agreements for the sale and purchase of natural gas between the two countries, and stipulated the quantities of gas exported by Egypt to Jordan during 2019, which is equivalent to half of the needs of the electrical system in the Kingdom.
Jordan looks at the importance of the return of Egyptian natural gas in reducing the cost of the energy bill, which for a long time put pressure on the Kingdom’s budget, pointing to the effect of natural gas in reducing electricity costs for citizens.
Under the agreements between the two countries, Egyptian natural gas was pumped back into the Kingdom in September 2018, in experimental quantities, following a complete halt since 2011.
Egypt has supplied Jordan with regarding 250 million cubic feet of gas per day since 2004, but these quantities declined starting at the end of 2009 and stopped as of 2011.
Energy projects between Jordan and Egypt date back to 1988, when an electricity link was implemented between Egypt and Jordan, then Jordan with Syria in 2001, followed by Lebanon with Syria in 2009.
Jordan and UAE
In November 2021, Jordan and Israel signed, under the auspices of the United Arab Emirates and the United States, a preliminary agreement to cooperate in the production of electricity from solar energy and water desalination, on the sidelines of the Expo 2020 Dubai.
The agreement stipulates that Jordan will generate electricity for Israel from its solar energy, and in return Israel will work on desalinating sea water for the benefit of the kingdom, which suffers from a shortage of potable water.
It is expected to provide Jordan with regarding 100 million cubic meters as a first stage that can be increased, which might partly solve the water scarcity crisis that the country has been experiencing recently, in exchange for providing Israel with 1.2 gigawatts of electricity generated through the planned solar stations in the south and east The kingdom.
It is scheduled that the UAE company Masdar will build a solar power plant in Jordan, to generate electricity for Israel; All parties have started working on feasibility studies for this project.