Qatar may be key to solving Egypt’s fuel crisis

With Ramadan under way, there is heightened risk that more power shortages in Egypt could provoke further unrest. Egypt has suffered from fuel shortages all year and, in the days before Mohammed Morsi’s overthrow, panic-buying led to long queues outside petrol stations. The Morsi government’s failure to deal with the problem was one of the reasons for its great unpopularity, as the new interim government and its Gulf backers are painfully aware. In the immediate aftermath of the coup, shortages of bottled cooking gas and vehicle fuel seemed to ease.