Petroleum minister opens new storage, trading warehouse

CAIRO – 12 December 2017: "The trading arm of the Ministry of Petroleum, Misr Petroleum, started trial operations of a new storage, shipping and trading warehouse in Badr City with $33 billion in investment," Minister of Petroleum Tarek el-Molla said Tuesday.

"Spread over 120,000 square meters, the warehouse would have a storage capacity of 30 million liters of gasoline and diesel," Molla added in a statement.

"The warehouse includes two diesel tanks with a capacity of 12,000 tons, two 80-octane gasoline tanks with 7,000 tons in capacity, three 92-octane tanks with 6,000 tons in capacity, and a 95-octane tank with 750 tons in capacity," chairman of Misr Petroleum Mohamed Shabaan said.

Egypt targets producing 3.113 million tons of gasoline, 6.603 million tons of diesel, 481,000 tons of butane gas and some 1.438 million tons of jet fuel over the next four years.

After the first wave of fuel price hikes following the flotation of the Egyptian pound in November 2016, consumption of gasoline 92-octane declined 10 percent, while using 80-octane hiked between 10-15 percent.

In late June, new fuel prices were announced as the price of 80-octane gasoline soared from LE 1.60 ($0.08) to LE 3.65 ($0.20) per liter, while 92-octane increased from LE 3.50 ($0.19) to LE 5.00 ($0.28) per liter.

The prices of natural gas for homes and butane gas cylinders were also raised by 50 percent and 100 percent respectively.