The government says it has a plan to put an end to power cuts this summer: Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly delivered a televised statement to apologize to the people and lay out a plan to end power cuts for the summer months and eventually do away with them for good yesterday. Madbouly’s interjection follows the build-up of public frustration and anger on the airwaves against the extension of load shedding by an “extra hour” on top of the already allotted two-hour outages until the end of the week that saw some areas reporting outages of five or more hours per day.

Say goodbye to power cuts by July: Madbouly penciled in the third week of July as when the country will be ready to “stop cutting electricity completely throughout the summer period.” However, Madbouly clarified that the current “one hour” extension will continue as planned until the end of the week and that power cuts will resume after the summer months until the end of year.

The government thinks part of the solution is to spend its way out of the problem: Madbouly laid out a USD 1 bn plan to import fuel to power energy plants till the end of the year, in addition to USD 180 mn to import 300 tons of mazut next week.

It’s also not just a supply-side issue: Alongside upping supply, the government wants to lessen energy demand by closing all shops and malls — with the exception of supermarkets, restaurants, and pharmacies — by 10pm. Restaurants will be allowed to run until 1am.

You at home can also play a role in getting the lights back on: Madbouly also turned to people at home to help out by rationalizing energy use.

The government is also working to spread out power cuts more fairly: President Abdel Fattah El Sisi has directed the government to fairly distribute power cuts among the nation’s populace alongside its efforts to reduce powercuts overall, and instructed the government to work to end the problem as soon as possible, an unnamed government source reportedly told Extra News prior to Madbouly’s presser.

The surprise week-long extension of additional outages this week came as a result of a gas field in a “neighboring country” being offline for a 12-hour period, Madbouly said, without specifying the country.

The notoriously energy-intensive fertilizer industry in particular has been having a rough time: High temperatures, increasing electricity consumption prices, and cuts to the regional gas supply have led Abu Qir Fertilizers to cease natural gas supplies to its plants “until improvement in the operating conditions of the network,” the company said in an EGX disclosure (pdf). Sidi Kerir Petrochemicals also announced a total shutdown of operations in its plants due to a “lack of feed gasses,” it said in a disclosure (pdf) to the bourse.

But supplies to the industry should be back to normal by the end of the week: With temperatures expected to soon start cooling, gas supplies to fertilizer factories should be back to normal levels by the end of the week, an Oil Ministry official told Enterprise.

The newly-arrived LNG regasification unit should also be up and running soon: Supply-side pressures should ease once the LNG regasification unit in the Gulf of Suez comes online within days as it will speed up the process of regasifying and pumping LNG shipments to industries and power plants, the Oil Ministry source added. Another government source confirmed that Egypt will also be welcoming mazut shipments from KSA.

Just in time: State gas firm EGAS is reportedly looking to acquire seven shipments of LNG cargoes in July, six more in August, and four more in September in a tender that closes today, in what is set to be its largest shipment of LNG in years.

The international press also got a hold of the story: Reuters | Bloomberg.

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