Lebanon’s energy crunch has forced it to shut down its two main state-owned electricity plants, the public electricity company said yesterday, according to Sky News Arabia. This left large parts of the country with no power, with the outage likely to last until Monday, a Lebanese official told Reuters. Egypt has been putting the final touches on an agreement to supply Lebanon with natural gas via a pipeline running through Jordan and Syria as the country seeks to mitigate shortages of fuel imports, and expects to have gas flowing within weeks. The agreement also involves using Egyptian natural gas to generate electricity within Jordan to transmit directly to Lebanon, with Jordan’s energy minister saying the country hopes to start transmitting the power by year’s end, Reuters reports.