Page 8 - MEOG Week 09

MEOG PoLICy MEOG
The statement revealed that the Egyptian pri- vate sector signed agreements to purchase gas from Israeli fields, to be pumped through the pipelines of the Egyptian Natural Gas holding Company, liquefied at the Egyptian liquefaction factories, and then exported to Europe, thus enhancing Egypt’s project to become a regional centre for trading gas and oil.
Israel began pumping natural gas to Egypt for the first time earlier this month under a $15 billion, 15-year landmark deal to liquefy it and re-export it to Europe.
The statement referred to the increase in the volume of Egypt’s natural gas production, reach- ing around 7.2 billion cubic feet per day, as well as saving an approximate $1.5 billion annually, previously spent on importing liquefied gas.
The ministry disclosed: “The largest gas field in the Mediterranean has already been discov- ered, i.e. the Zohr field, which contributes about 40 per cent of Egypt’s natural gas production, and achieves a record in its production estimated at 2.7 billion cubic feet per day.”
The authorities started pumping natural gas from the field, through the pipelines of the Egyp- tian Natural Gas holding Company, at the end of December 2017. The total investment volume for the development of the field over its lifetime is around $15.6 billion, with a volume of gas reserves of about 30 trillion cubic feet, according to the ministry statement.
It is worth noting that over the past four years, 27 projects were implemented to develop gas fields with investments amounting to $31 billion, at a production rate of around 7.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day.
The increase in local natural gas production has succeeded in covering the needs of economic sectors and citizens, where the annual rate of nat- ural gas delivery to homes increased to 1,250,000 housing units, bringing the total of delivered gas
to more than 10.7 million housing units since the start of exploiting the field. Meanwhile, 43,000 cars were converted to operate with natural gas, bringing the total number of converted automo- biles to over 300,000.
In early February there was a setback to these plans when a gas pipeline in Egypt’s Sinai Pen- insula was blown up. There were conflicting reports on the identity of the pipeline: the Islamic State extremist group said that it blew up the pipeline, claiming it was connected to Israel, but security sources earlier said the pipeline hit was a domestic one that connects to a power station in el-Arish, powering homes and factories in cen- tral Sinai. No casualties were reported.
Masked gunmen drove a four-wheel drive before detonating explosives in the attack, car- ried out around 80 kilometres west of the pro- vincial capital El-Arish. Some media reports in Egypt and Israel said, however, that the section of pipeline hit was part of Israel’s Leviathan offshore field that connects the two countries — claims denied to AFP news agency by the Leviathan consortium.
But in a statement posted on its Telegram chat groups, IS said “caliphate soldiers targeted... the natural gas line linking the Jews and the apostate Egyptian government.”
It claimed that the section of the pipeline hit was in the Sinai village of Al Teloul and that sev- eral explosive devices were used to blow it up, causing “material damage.”
One of the two offshore fields managed by Israeli and American firms in the deal, Levia- than is estimated to hold 535 billion cubic meters (18.9 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas, along with 34.1 million barrels of condensate.
Egypt has previously exported gas to Israel but land sections of the export pipeline were tar- geted multiple times by Sinai militants in 2011 and 2012.™
P8
w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 09 04•March•2020