Egypt to stop importing gas by end of 2018: Petroleum Min.

CAIRO – 2 November 2017: Egypt will not import liquified natural gas by the end of 2018, as all phases of the Zohr gas field in the Mediterranean Sea will have been finished, Petroleum Minister Tarek el-Molla said on Wednesday.

In a call-in program, the minister stated that Egypt is still importing liquified natural gas monthly at a total cost of $220 million.

“We used to import 12 shipments of the gas monthly, yet now we import only eight shipments of gas, and by the end of 2018, we will stop importing it”, Molla clarified.

He added that Egypt will save nearly $1.5 billion annually when the Zohr gas field starts to fully operate, noting that by 2020 there will be plentiful supply of local natural gas to be exported and to be used in the heavy and petrochemical industries.

A set of practical experiments are expected to be conducted at Zohr before the end of October to produce an estimated 350 million cubic feet (MMCF) of gas per day and to be increased up to 1,000 MMCF by the end of 2017.

Zohr is the largest natural gas field found in the Mediterranean and was discovered in 2015 by Italy’s Eni. The field has an area of 100 square meters at a depth of 1,450 meters.

Investing around $10 billion in the project, Eni is estimating total output of the field to be approximately 30 trillion cubic feet of gas.

The field will start production through three phases. The first phase will see an output of one billion cubic feet per day. When all seven fields are complete by 2019, this amount will increase to 2.7 billion cubic feet per day.

The field is expected to secure Egypt’s domestic needs of gas after it has become a net importer of gas following a cut in production after the January revolution.