Prime Minister Sherif Ismail called on the Minister of Petroleum to quickly complete the development projects of discovered fields in order to increase the local production of crude oil and gas, and relieve the pressure on foreign exchange resources.
During his visit to the Petroleum Ministry on Wednesday, Ismail said that Egypt will achieve natural gas self-sufficiency by the end of 2019. The prime minister stressed the importance of intensifying exploration and research works during the upcoming phase.
Ismail also stressed the importance of delivering natural gas to homes as this would improve the services offered to citizens and provide the necessary amount of butane, 50% of which is imported.
The prime minister stated that the government’s plan aims to turn Egypt into a regional hub for the trade of petroleum and gas. It also aims to increase the production of crude oil and natural gas, and develop mineral wealth programmes, in addition to increasing the efficiency of infrastructure, developing ports, and offering the necessary facilitations for this vital sector.
For his part, Minister of Petroleum Tarek El Molla said that nine projects to develop gas and oil fields were carried out with $1.8bn of investments with a rate of 9,000 barrels of condensates and more than 1bn cubic feet of gas per day.
He added that seven projects are being undertaken to develop gas fields with investments estimated at $31.5bn within the next three years. The development projects began gradually, topped by Zohr field, with production rates of 1.2bn cubic feet in the first phase, starting at the end of 2017. Production will be increased to reach 2.7bn cubic feet in 2019.
As for linking and connecting natural gas to residential units, the report stated that over 925,000 residential units have been linked to natural gas between September 2015 and December 2016, raising the total number of houses connected to gas to 7.9 million units since the project was inaugurated. Furthermore, the report noted that for the first time, gas was linked to residential units in Marsa Matrouh.
