Egypt's Petroleum Minister Tarek EL-Molla said that Egypt is aiming to increase its natural gas production up to 50 percent by mid-2018, as well as completing the infrastructure development projects of Misr Fertilizers Production Company (MOPCO) and The Egyptian Company for Ethylene Production (ETHYDCO) petrochemicals factories. El-Molla's statement came during his participation in the Egyptian-British business council meetings held in London. The minister stated before the council that Egypt has announced two major international bids for gas and petroleum excavation in 2016, in addition to the inking of 76 agreements and securing $31 billion of investments during the upcoming 3-4 years, to speed up gas excavation in the Zohr, North Alexandria and Atoll fields. El-Molla stressed that the gas production sector is set to become a major pillar of sustainable devolvement by 2021, making Egypt an international hub of gas and petroleum production. Egypt has 12 natural gas field development projects underway worth a total of $33 billion in investment, El-Molla stated in May 2016. The three largest projects, which include the mammoth Mediterranean gas field Zohr that was discovered by Italy's Eni in 2015, are expected to collectively bring 4.6 billion cfd online by the start of 2019. Egypt imports of LNG reached around 1-1.1 billion cfd of LNG in 2016. The country relies to a large extent on LNG to generate electricity for its 90 million population.
