Cairo — Controversy prevailed in the Egyptian public opinion, after Deltares, a Dutch advisory institute, announced on Sept. 15 its withdrawal from a study to assess the risks that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is under construction on the Blue Nile, can cause to Egypt and Sudan.

The withdrawal from the project by Deltares has been met by a wave of objections in Egypt for fear that this could further obstruct the completion of the study, which was supposed to be completed last March — at the time, the research hadn't even started yet. Ethiopia, on the other hand, has completed 47% of the required work on the dam and is preparing to inaugurate and operate the first stage in October 2016. This initial operation threatens to reduce Egypt’s share of the Nile waters, currently standing about 55.5 billion cubic meters, by 14.5 billion cubic meters.

Deltares justified its withdrawal in a statement posted on its website Sept. 15, saying that the conditions as imposed by the Tripartite National Committee and BRL Group, a French consultancy firm that is also carrying out a study alongside Deltares before the latter withdrew, on how the study should be carried out did not provide sufficient guarantees that the results delivered would be unbiased and accurate.

The negotiations between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, on the one hand, and Deltares and BRL, on the other, failed to resolve the differences over the tasks to be carried out by Deltares and BRL in order to conduct the planned study. BRL, which is required to conduct 70% of the study, made an offer where it monopolizes the study and turns Deltares into a subcontractor that performs the tasks delegated to it by BRL, which Deltares has rejected.