Almost 50 people, including at least 11 security officers, died in gunbattles during raids on suspected Gama'a hideouts in March alone.
The main alternative was through Iran to Turkey, where it would link with Turkey's own gas network to Europe. The consortium included the local Gama group and Botas, Turkey's state pipeline company.
Dias took his ship around the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, leaving da Gama to open up the sea route to India 10 years later.
As Russian troops blasted the White House building in Moscow during the anti-Yeltsin rebellion, executives at Gama Industry in Turkey watched on televison with particular interest.
The three have been hailed as heroes by Gama'a al-Islamiya, which is fighting to replace the Egyptian government with a strict Islamic state.
(The San Francisco Opera deploys the tenor more imaginatively, tootling the Horn of Africa as Meyerbeer's Vasco da Gama).