Eng. Hani Soliman chairman of the Egyptian petrochemical holding company said that the discussions of the negative impact of the Agrium fertilizers project in Damietta on the environment is totally nonsense taking into consideration that the ministry of environmental affairs permitted the execution of the project and that the ministry seeks Egypt's national welfare without considering any other issues and that the ministry of environment refused many other different projects which were studied and turned out to be harmful to the environment.
Eng. Hani Soliman said that the role of the petrochemicals holding company is obtaining the permits from the concerned ministries including the ministry of environment, he added that the disapproval of the civil society in Damietta is not an evidence against the project or an evidence of violation of the environmental measurements by the project but the isuue was left to the civil society judgement whether to refuse or accept the execution of such project in its area.
Eng. Soliman mentioned that the fertilizers industry is very old in Egypt and that there are six fertilizers' mills cuirrently operating in Egypt; Abu Kbir 2&3 mills and Alexandria fertilizers mill in Alexandria governorate, helwan fertilizers mill in helwan governorate, the Egyptian fertilizers mill in El Ain El Sokhna at Suez Governorate and MOPCO mill in Damietta Governorate, all these mills are using the same Certified German International Technology Permit which is the same technology applied in the Agrium project but it didn’t face the same feaqrs and objections in addition to the latest latest fertilizers project which is planned to be executed at the CHEMA plant in Aswan and it is expected to start opereation during the year 2009/2010 according to the ministry of investment which executes the project.
Eng. Soliman said that there was not any negative environmental impact recorded in the areas surrounding the mentioned project in the different governments and that the ministry of environment is the official entity in charge of giving environmental permits for any project according to the measurements it applies which at the same time are similar to the measurements applied worldwide and in all the industrial projects implemented in Egypt.
He clarified that the ministry of environment issued the environmental permit for the project after studying the environmental evaluation of the project and making sure that all environmental liabilities and measurements are taken into consideration.
Eng. Soliman continued that there are certain governmental authorities responsible for choosing the suggested locations for implementing the industrial projects in Egypt and this was applied to the location of Agrium in Damietta, also the project is being implemented by one of the biggest international specialized companies in fertilizers production and it has several fertilizers mills operating around the world in Canada, USA and Argentina which adopt the highest degrees of environmental measurements and the same is applied in their projects in Egypt.
Such measurements are applied and stated in the Egyptian law of environment, Eng. Soliman clarified that rumors which imply that the project is carcinogenic or harmful to the general health or the marine environment is totally misleading and incorrect .
He added that Agrium fertilizers project was feasibly studied carefully and generates the optimum revenues for Egypt.
On the other hand, Eng. Mahmoud Latif Chairman of the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company said that the pricing equation of agrium project is the best currently applied system for natural gas pricing in Egypt, and that the price in the contract of the project is the highest gas price for the industrial project in Egypt up till now.
He also said that it is higher than any pricing equation among the current electricity, fertilizers or cement and steel projects, even after applying natural gas pricing liberation equation in high Energy consumption projects which was required by the ministry of industry and commerce to implement its ambitious plan to liberate the prices for the industrial activities reaching a gas price of $2.65/million BTU for the high energy consumption factories by the end of the year while the price of the natural gas supplied to Agrium project is determined according to the international price of the final product(Urea & Ammonia) without specifying a maximum limit , so if the current urea price is $45/ton then the price of the gas supplied to Agrium is $4.3/million BTU and for the ammonia if the price in the international market was about $575/ton then the price of the supplied gas will reach $5.4/million BTU.
Meanwhile, Eng. Latif mentioned that the international indications show that the price of Urea will continue to increase due to the increasing demand which assures that the price of the gas supplied to the project will continue in generating good revenues comparing to the price of buying the share of the foreign partner from natural gas and the selling prices of natural gas in the domestic market.
Eng. Latif said that the published information about fixing the gas price for Agrium project for five years is totally incorrect as the contract states that the price fixation is only for two years which represents the preliminary operation in most of the projects which is usually accompanied by instability in production, taking into consideration that the Egyptian contribution in the project in the project is 33% and that during this period the investors start to pay the installments of the loans after the grace period granted by the funding institutes during the establishment of the project but the economic reference for both the buyer and the seller is based on the actual revenue through the project's life time.