CAIRO: The Egyptian Ministry of Petroleum expects repairs to the pipeline supplying natural gas to Israel and Jordan to be completed by the end of this week, according to the official MENA news agency. The Egyptian Natural Gas Company (GASCO), a subsidiary of the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC), is working on repairing a section that intersects with railroad tracks. The pipeline was damaged on July 4 in an explosion in the Bir Abd region at Nagah in the northern Sinai Peninsula. MENA quotes an official explaining that a group of men in a small truck forced the guards to leave the station at gunpoint before planting an explosive device. This explosion was the third of its kind this year, following attacks on February 5 near the al-Arish compression station and April 27 near the village of el-Sabil, which cut off the flow of natural gas for weeks. In March, an attempted explosion near el-Sabil failed when the device did not detonate. BM