Latest news with #MEES
The Hindu
4 days ago
- General
- The Hindu
Multiple Entry Exit System in schools: Disruptive or inclusive
The multiple entry- exit system as proposed by the National education policy (NEP), 2020, focuses on transforming higher education and making it more student-centred. This system also allows students to enter and exit academic programs at different stages, earning certificates, diplomas, or degrees based on the credits accumulated. The approach offers many positive changes. Flexibility that means 'Learn at your own pace' - Students can choose to exit after completing one or more years of a programme and re-enter later to complete their degree. This will also promote lifelong learning by promoting and allowing students to return and resume to education at different stages of their careers. By providing flexibility, MEES also helps and aims to minimize the number of students who leave higher education without a recognized qualification. This will reduce dropout rates. MEES empowers students to take decisions and make choices about their educations which will be based on their individual needs and circumstances. This will make higher education more accessible to a wider range of students, including those who may have had to interrupt their studies due to personal or professional reasons. To bring about the changes, there needs to be a lot of ground level work that needs to be planned and executed to see the 100% efficacy of the system. Clear and precise guidelines as well as a standardized credit accumulation system needs to be planned. There also needs to be more structured and clear instructions about various crucial aspects such as eligibility criteria, credit transfer mechanisms, alignment with global standards. All these need to also be in sync with potential challenges that might disrupt the student teacher ratio and may also result in potential for dilution of core subjects due to the emphasis on multidisciplinary education. The challenges indeed can be worked upon with a more structured design and can be mitigated through a well thought out implementation strategy. The Multiple Entry and Exit System under NEP 2020 aims to create a more flexible, inclusive, and student-friendly higher education landscape in India. With a well laid out plan, it can be a boon for the student fraternity. (The author is an educationist and trustee, Sanskriti Group of Schools)
Al-Ahram Weekly
25-06-2025
- Business
- Al-Ahram Weekly
No stone left unturned in the search for gas - Economy - Al-Ahram Weekly
Second only to developments in the Iran-Israel conflict, reports on government efforts to secure gas supplies and prevent load shedding now dominate both airtime and print space in the Egyptian media. The government is moving on parallel paths, starting with signing gas import agreements, accelerating the connection of new regasification units to the national grid, depending more on fuel oil to operate power plants, and offering new areas for exploration. The Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources awarded seven new exploration and production blocks to investors earlier this week. A statement by the ministry noted that out of these blocks, at least 17 new oil and gas wells should show yields soon. Meanwhile, the new Floating Storage and Regasification Units (FSRU), huge vessels that dock in ports receiving liquified natural gas (LNG) shipments and convert them into the gaseous state that can be easily pumped into pipelines connected to the national grid, were largely in the limelight. Both the prime minister and the minister of petroleum visited the Ain Sokhna Port to observe the readiness of the infrastructure for the connection of the second and third FSRU. Currently, Egypt has one operational FSRU, Hoegh Galleon, at the Red Sea port of Ain Sokhna, with two more expected to start working in July and a fourth to reach the country in August. 'Bringing the second and third regasification vessels into operation by the first week of July will secure our needs if gas supplies from the networks of neighbouring countries are cut off,' said Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli at the cabinet's weekly press conference. The two new units are Energos Eskimo, obtained from Jordan earlier this month, and the German-built Energos Power. Egypt had contracted for eight LNG shipments to be offloaded, regasified, and pumped into the national grid in June, provided that a second regasification unit was up and working. However, there was a delay in connecting the new FSRU unit, and because the shipments had already maxed out the capacity of the Hoegh Galleon, the only currently working FSRU, tankers are queuing in Ain Sokhna waiting to offload their cargoes, according to the Middle East Economic Survey (MEES). The problem of delays would have been circumvented had the Energos Eskimo been in its original place in Aqaba. In December 2024, the American company that owns the Energos Eskimo agreed with the Egyptian authorities that the unit would be transferred to Egyptian waters, on the condition that Egypt provided Jordan with the needed gas through the Arab Pipeline. Under the deal, Jordan, which has a gas supply gap and is also dependent on Israeli gas exports, had the right to share the use of the Energos Eskimo until 2026, with around 350 million cubic feet of gas per day exported to Jordan and representing a significant share of the vessel's regasification capacity. The MEES explained that Egypt last year imported four gas cargoes between April and June through the Energos Eskimo while it was at Aqaba, but 'it is now marooned and waiting to be installed to Egypt's grid.' The ship was transferred from Aqaba to Ain Sokhna at the start of this month. Due to disruptions in Israeli gas supplies, Egypt is supplying Jordan with only 100 million cubic feet of natural gas per day to help it operate its power plants. It is doubling its electricity exports to Jordan. The two countries have a long-standing electricity exchange agreement, which was renewed for 2025. Another track that the government has been following is increasing its purchases of fuel oil that can be used instead of gas in operating the facilities of some industries. According to Reuters, Egypt is seeking approximately 900,000 tons of fuel oil for supply in August through its latest supply tender. The country consumes approximately 40,000 tons of fuel oil per day for power generation, according to the news agency. The current situation is a far cry from how things were between 2019 and 2022, when Egypt was a net gas exporter thanks to the production of the giant gas field Zohr. However, a slowdown in production in the Field due to technical issues, as well as foreign explorers' reluctance to increase production with their dues accumulating, cast its shadow on the country's production, and it started to import gas from Israel. Egypt's gas production came below the four billion cubic feet per day threshold in recent months, its lowest in almost a decade. Gas represents 80 per cent of the fuel mix used to generate power in Egypt. Imports from Israel were stable until the recent escalation of the conflict between Israel and Iran. Egypt's gas imports from Israel stopped on 13 June, with the Leviathan and Karish fields suspending production as soon as the first Iranian blows struck Israeli targets. Egypt used to receive around one billion cubic feet per day of gas from Israel, accounting for up to 60 per cent of its total gas imports and around a fifth of its total consumption, according to the Joint Organisation for Data Initiative (JODI), an international initiative to make oil and gas data available. While Israel resumed pumping gas, in small quantities, to both Jordan and Egypt at the beginning of the week, it is rumoured to have stopped a couple of days later, with Iran's attacks hitting energy facilities. Accordingly, the government told local petrochemical plants that the resumption of gas supplies would be delayed until the end of June, and the return to pre-war volumes would take place by mid-July, according to a statement by an anonymous official source to Al-Arabiya Business. * A version of this article appears in print in the 26 June, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link:
Al-Ahram Weekly
28-02-2025
- Business
- Al-Ahram Weekly
Tightening the deficit on gas - Economy - Al-Ahram Weekly
Steps are being taken to bridge the gap in gas production The streak of bad news on Egypt's natural-gas production has been broken, following three years of a decline in production, under-met demand, and increased imports, with officials now speaking of the possibility of Egypt regaining its status as a net gas exporter by 2027. Developments over the past six weeks have been particularly promising, with Egypt agreeing last week with Cyprus to receive gas from its largest fields, the Cronos, off Cyprus's southwest coast, and the Aphrodite, to the southeast. The gas will be transported by pipeline to Egyptian waters and then transferred to Egyptian liquefaction facilities at Idku and Damietta before being re-exported as liquified natural gas (LNG) to Europe. The deal is advantageous to Egypt as it will have the Right Of First Refusal (ROFR), allowing it to decide whether to purchase gas liquefied in local plants or sell it on, according to Osama Kamal, a former Oil Minister. 'Egypt can use this gas to cover part of the deficit in local supply. More importantly, the gas transferred through the pipelines is less expensive than importing LNG and then changing it back to the gaseous state to pump it into the local network. Moreover, Egypt will be getting a fee for liquefying and then exporting the gas to Europe,' Kamal noted. However, this will not happen immediately, as while discoveries have been announced by Cyprus since 2013 they have lacked the needed infrastructure to transfer and sell it, he added. 'There was a breakthrough when Cyprus agreed with Chevron to undertake the development process and link its fields with our network very close to the Zohr Field, from where we would transfer it to liquefaction units in Damietta and Idku,' he said. The problem has been that the costly process of developing these fields might take six months or even 18 months, depending on development plans, which are still unclear, Kamal said. The government has plans to cover domestic needs for gas until then. The Cyprus deal came a few weeks after the resumption of drilling in the Zohr Field. In October, Petroleum Minister Karim Badawi said the government planned to increase production at the field by 220 million cubic feet per day (cf/d) through drilling new wells. Starting operations in 2017, the Zohr Field was the main reason Egypt became a net exporter of gas, with production peaking at 2.8 billion cf/d in the third quarter of 2021. However, technical problems related to water filtration as well as a stop in drilling activities due to delays in paying arrears to Eni, the field's developer, led to a decline in production to below two billion cf/d in the first half of 2024. A report by the Middle East Economic Survey (MEES) pointed out that Egypt's gas production dropped to an eight-year low in 2024 to reach 4.87 billion cf/d. The output of the offshore Mediterranean fields, where the Zohr and other smaller fields are located, dipped by 18 per cent through the year to reach 3.54 billion cf/d, its lowest in six years. In addition to plans to increase imports, the government is now giving foreign explorers incentives to encourage them to increase production. This includes paying arrears, with the government paying $1 billion of arrears in January after setting a schedule to repay all the $6.5 billion accumulated dues up until June 2025. It also includes increasing production-sharing ratios with foreign companies in exchange for new investments as well as giving them the green light to export some of their production. Exploration contracts in Egypt give foreign partners 25 to 30 per cent of a field's production. The government also uses the right to buy gas from them rather than let them export it. The delay in paying its dues has accumulated, with the arrears pushing some foreign companies to slow down the exploration processes, leading to last year's energy crunch. Egypt is also pursuing the possibility of increasing its imports of gas from Israel by 58 per cent during the summer months, according to an unnamed government official quoted by Asharq Business. If agreed upon, this will mean Egypt will import 1.5 billion cubic feet of Israeli gas per day. 'As in the case of the Cypriot gas, this is a good bargain, as this is piped gas which is much cheaper than the imported LNG alternative,' the official said. He explained that the price of the piped gas was $4 for each Mobile Treatment Unit (mtu). Importing gas in the LNG form would add an extra $4 to $5 per mtu, representing the cost of the liquefaction, transport, insurance, and regasification, making the overall cost around $9 per mtu. Egypt started to import Israeli gas in 2020. The original plan was to receive the gas through a pipeline, liquefy it, and export it to Europe. However, with the drop in local production, Egypt started to depend on Israeli gas to cover increased domestic demand. The flow of gas was suspended for a while shortly after the fighting escalated with Hamas in Gaza, an incident that raises fears about the future of these supplies in case bilateral relations turn sour in the future. Kamal said Egypt was well prepared for such a scenario. All Egypt's power stations use dual fuel technology, which enables them to switch from one form of fuel to another. This means that the stations can switch from gas to Mazut seamlessly during operations without loss of power, he said. Over and above the power-generation sector, the largest consumer of gas locally, the government has also introduced plans to control the waste and theft of electricity. Kamal said that before these plans were implemented, the theft and waste of electricity resulted in losing 25 to 38 per cent of generated power. The amount of generated electricity per day hovers around an average of 36 Gigawatts (GW), which means that around eight to nine GW were being wasted. 'Cutting these losses means that the demand for gas and thus gas imports will be reduced,' Kamal noted. Expected additions to the energy produced in Egypt during the coming years will make it less vulnerable to any disruptions in imported gas. There are new agreements for the production of solar and wind energy that will lead to the addition of five to six GW to the national grid starting in June. In addition, Egypt's first-ever nuclear-generated power from the Al-Dabaa Plant will enter the grid in 2027-2028, with another five GW being added to the national network. 'The strategy to increase the renewables share in the energy mix to 42 per cent by 2030 or 2035 will lead to balancing the energy demand and supply forces,' Kamal said. In parallel, Egypt is trying to secure more LNG imports. According to the CNN Business Arabic Website, the government will launch a tender for LNG shipments to meet heightened summer demand. This comes after finalising agreements totalling $3 billion in December to purchase 60 LNG shipments in 2025. The increase in LNG imports has necessitated Egypt's renting more floating regasification units, making the total number of units rented reach four or five, according to different sources. * A version of this article appears in print in the 27 February, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link:
