Economist Heikal attacks Riyadh over halting oil shipments to Egypt

Egyptian economic analyst Hassan Heikal, the grandson of late renowned author Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, criticized Riyadh for halting its oil supplies to Egypt, accusing the current Saudi generation of repeating a mistake that the kingdom made during the time of then-Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

“Unfortunately, there is a generation in Saudi Arabia that never saw Egypt without being in a financial problem, and they are repeating the World Bank’s mistake of withdrawing funding for [building] the High Dam,” Heikal tweeted on the social networking website Twitter.

The spokesperson for Egypt’s petroleum ministry, Hamdy Abdel Aziz, said that the Saudi state-owned company Aramco has not sent oil shipments for November, for the second month in a row, and has not notified Egypt of halting those shipments.

Saudi Arabia had agreed in April, during an official Cairo visit by King Salman, to provide Egypt with 700,000 tons of petroleum products monthly for five years. Egypt is a net importer of energy.

According to Egyptian media reports, Aramco had been regularly informing Egypt of the shipments date by the first week of every month at the latest; but it did not do so in October and November.

Abdel Aziz added that the ministry has made an urgent invitation for tenders for the supply of 700,000 tons of gasoline, diesel fuel and fuel oil as an alternative to Saudi shipments so as to meet citizens’ needs.

The ministry spokesman added that the contract signed between Egypt’s petroleum authority and Saudi’s Aramco has not been cancelled as yet.

Riyadh has supported Cairo and provided billions in aid to the cash-strapped Egyptian economy since then-defence minister Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi toppled former president Mohamed Morsi, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, following mass protests against Morsi’s rule.

But Egyptian-Saudi relations have lately seen tensions after Egypt voted in favour of a Russian-backed draft resolution on Syria at the United Nations Security Council.

Source: Middle East Monitor