However, the break is short and will last only until mid-September, Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli said in a press conference last week. He did note that his government aims to terminate the load-shedding schemes by 2025. Load shedding, also known as rolling blackouts, is a controlled and temporary interruption of electricity supplies to certain areas within a region.

Egyptians have been suffering from daily one- to two-hour power cuts for more than a year with short breaks in between,including the fasting month of Ramadan and the Coptic and Islamic feasts. The recurrent power cuts are due to the increased consumption on the back of exceptionally hot weather together with a decrease in Egypt’s production of natural gas which feeds power stations nationwide.

On Sunday, which was supposed to be the first power-cut free day, some areas spent hours with no electricity. The Electricity Ministry’s spokesperson said the continued blackouts were due to increased pressure on the grid and not part of the now-frozen load-shedding policy.

Madbouli had previously said that temporary power cuts might happen as power generators would be affected by high temperatures.

The decision to halt power cuts came after Egypt received five out of 21 shipments of natural gas it agreed to buy to cover its unmet demands during the next few months. The shipments carried 155,000 cubic metres of liquefied natural gas to be regasified in a German floating regasification station that Egypt has rented. The resulting gas is being pumped in the national grid.

“Electricity consumption over the last year soared by 12 per cent a year to reach 37.5 GW per day,” according to Madbouli.

According to the initiative Joint Organisations Data, a provider of data in the global oil and gas markets, Egypt’s natural gas output declined to 4.3 billion cubic metres in May, its lowest level since February 2018.

The decline stems from a reduction in the production of the gigantic Zohr oil field administered by the Italian company Eni. The field has been beset by water issues since 2021.

Just two years ago, Egypt was a net exporter of gas, especially to Europe from its terminals on the Mediterranean Sea. The gas was locally produced and also produced in Israel and sent to Egypt. However, in most cases, the volume of the exports inched downwards during the hot summer months when demand increases due to high temperatures.
To help ease the strain on the grid, the government made a number of decisions, including obliging shops to close earlier, and to dim or cut offlights from street lamps on highways. It even temporarily stopped supplies of gas to energy-intensive industries like fertilisers, driving three of the largest fertiliser producers to halt some production lines.

Madbouli noted that new renewable energy products, both private and public, should provide the network withthree to four gigawatts next summer to bridge the natural gas supply demand gap. There are currently ongoing Egyptian-Emirati talks on projects that would add four GW of renewable energy next summer.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 25 July, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly