Govt temporarily lengthens power cuts nationwide, 3 hours of outages in Cairo

Households in Cairo were without electricity for at least three hours per day on Sunday. 

A Cabinet statement, published Sunday evening, announced that the government-scheduled power cuts had been extended temporarily for an additional hour, to be effective Sunday and Monday. 

Television anchor Ahmed Moussa led with the announced increases in his primetime news talk show, Ala Masouleytey, apologizing to citizens for the belated Sunday announcement. 

The power cuts are a feature of the government’s response to Egypt’s growing energy crisis, which is exacerbated as consumption peaks during summer months. Hour-long cuts the government introduced to reduce demand in July 2023 have lengthened to two hours per day.

In its statement on Sunday evening, the Cabinet explained that the additional third hour of outages aims to maintain the “operational efficiency of power plants and the national natural gas network.”

Natural gas is the main source of fuel for electricity production in Egypt, supplying between 75 and 96 percent of the country’s electricity in 2019. Fuel oil (mazut) is also used at power plants.

Residents in some governorates reported that power cuts lengthened beyond three hours on Sunday, and even up to 13 hours a day in some southern areas. Coastal cities, such as the North Coast and Marsa Matruh, were exempt from power cuts however, in order for “citizens to spend their summer vacations without being affected by the outages.”

However, Port Said saw an additional two-hours on the usual power cuts, according to Al-Qanah electricity transmission company, leaving the city with a total of four-hour long power cuts. The company did not specify the duration of the new measure. 

Shortly before the Cabinet’s announcement, a government source told Bloomberg Asharq that electricity consumption on Sunday rose to a record level of 36,000 Megawatts, with the Petroleum Ministry responding by increasing its gas supply to power plants by 19 percent to 110 million cubic meters, along with 25,000 tons of fuel oil.

Egypt’s balance of fuel supply to demand has become more precarious over recent years as national consumption paired with a small export program have exceeded supply. The already scarce fuel resources were stretched to power the national grid as electricity consumption increased during the summer due to a series of heatwaves beginning in May, pushing temperatures over 40 degrees celsius for days.

While the Cabinet said the longer power cuts will end on Tuesday with the daily plan reverting to the usual two-hours, a source at the Egyptian Electricity Holding Company speaking exclusively to the privately-owned Al-Shorouk said that instructions have been issued for the three-hour-long cuts to continue in effect “until further instructions are received.”

The source said that the newly implemented three-hour-long cuts are to take place between the hours of 2 pm until 8 pm.

To fortify the national gas reserves, the government has ordered additional volumes of liquefied natural gas from Qatar and Algeria. Thirteen shipments are set to arrive in July, an informed source previously told Mada Masr on condition of anonymity. 

Egypt produces a majority of its own natural gas as well as importing additional volumes from Israel. A small proportion of the total gas resources are exported, while the remainder is used to power the national grid and support industry.

Since the beginning of Israel’s onslaught on the besieged Gaza strip, Egypt’s fuel availability has been severely impacted by several temporary closures of the Israeli Tamar gas field which halted import volumes. 

Officials and state-aligned figures have promised since last year that power cuts would be contained or halted, citing varying reasons for the cuts.