Egypt to achieve self-sufficiency of natural gas by 2018-end

CAIRO – 13 December 2017: Egypt will achieve its self-sufficiency of natural gas before the end of 2018, with gas production amounting to six billion cubic feet of gas a day, Petroleum Minister Tarek el-Molla said Wednesday.

He said that test operation for Misr Petroleum’s depot in Badr city has started with a cost of LE 500 million. The depot has a storage capacity of more than 30 million liters, according to Molla.

Egypt has started the test production from the Mediterranean’s largest gas field Zohr Saturday, with a production capacity of 300-500 million cubic feet a day.
The field is expected to save Egypt some $1 billion annually in gas imports and help it achieve self-sufficiency of natural gas.

Discovered in 2015 by Italian energy company Eni, Zohr gas 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.

Egypt produces 5.1 billion cubic feet of gas daily after several fields have started production. The country consumes around six billion cubic feet of gas a day, 65 percent of which go to the electricity sector.