Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said Friday it had signed an agreement with Gaza’s electric company that will establish an escrow account for the costs of supplying gas and generating electricity at the Strip’s sole power plant.
Faraan: The statement said that Qatar will be the owner of the account and will organize and manage payments through it. The Gaza Electricity Distribution Company will deposit $5 million per month when the planned gas-powered plant starts operating, the statement said.
Doha did not say how many years the Gulf nation was committing to the plan. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said Friday it had signed an agreement with Gaza’s electric company that will establish an escrow account for the costs of supplying gas and generating electricity at the Strip’s sole power plant.
The statement said that Qatar will be the owner of the account and will organize and manage payments through it. The Gaza Electricity Distribution Company will deposit $5 million per month when the planned gas-powered plant starts operating, the statement said.
Doha did not say how many years the Gulf nation was committing to the plan. Qatar, the Palestinian Authority and Gaza’s electrical company signed a deal last month advancing a long-term project to supply Gaza’s only power plant with Israeli natural gas. Qatar’s envoy to the Gaza Strip, Mohammad al-Emadi, said at the time that Doha had signed a memorandum containing a pledge to invest $60 million in laying the pipeline for the proposed project.
But a final deal on the initiative, which has been in the works for years, has yet to be reached and could still be months or years away.
The so-called “Gas for Gaza” initiative is a complex diplomatic dance, involving Israel, Hamas, the PA, Qatar, Egypt and the European Union, among other players. The project seeks to replace the diesel fuel that currently powers Gaza’s electrical plant with Israeli gas.
Gaza has suffered from a chronic electricity deficit for more than a decade. The coastal enclave has only one power plant — which runs on imported diesel fuel — and experiences daily blackouts of between eight and 12 hours.
