Partnering for exploration DANA Gas, the first Middle East regional private- sector natural gas company, announced on 27 April that it has signed an agreement with Kuwait International Oil and Environment Company (KIOEC) to take a 50 per cent share in the Dana Gas Komombo Concession in the Western Desert 800km south of Cairo. KIOEC is involved in the oil exploration, production, field services and management, and is a subsidiary of TAQAT Holding and Gulf Oil Investments. The concession covers nearly 23,000 square kilometres and is currently in the second of a three-year exploration project. "We are very pleased with this partnership. It brings additional value in oil and gas exploration and production activities," said Hani El-Sharqawi, Dana Gas manager in Egypt who added that his company will continue to operate the concession. The Komombo Basin is a little-explored frontier basin with only three wells drilled to date. However, drilling results have yielded some significant exploration potential. Last January, Dana Gas acquired Centurion Energy, a step which made it one of the highest oil and gas producers in Egypt. The acquisition has provided the company with a large platform for regional growth in the upstream gas sector of exploration and production across the Middle East. Dana Gas will also benefit from Centurion's further exploration potential in the Nile Delta and Upper Egypt. According to El-Sharqawi, the company has already been approached by several major international energy companies for collaboration in an active drilling programme for 2007. Egyptian-Swedish maritime cooperation A MARITIME safety programme twinning Egypt and Sweden was signed on 24 April, Enjy El-Naggar reports.The Support to the Association Agreement Programme (SAAP) and the Ministry of International Cooperation officially began working on the Maritime Safety Institutional Twinning Project between the Egyptian Authority for Maritime Safety and the Swedish Maritime Administration. "The budget of the projects is 1.2 million euro funded by the EU as part of the European-Egyptian MEDA Programme [the financial instrument of the EU for the implementation of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership]", said Minister of Transportation Mohamed Lutfi Mansour. He added that the twinning project "aims at supporting cooperation in six fields to improve maritime safety and reform national ship safety regulations." The project also focuses on initiatives that contribute to Egypt's efforts to upgrading the overall capacity of public administration. The project, entitled "Institutional Building and Legislation Approximation in Maritime Safety", is being implemented with the overall objective of enhancing maritime travel and safety by assisting the Egyptian Authority for Maritime Safety (EAFMS) to produce and deliver maritime services efficiently and to improve its institutional capacities as well as its human resource capabilities. The twinning project is being implemented by SAAP utilising a 27 million euro grant by the European Commission to integrate Egypt in the global transportation system and facilitate the creation of the free trade area being established by the EU-Egypt Association Agreement. Third generation services now operational A THIRD mobile company in Egypt started operating on 1 May. Customers in the cities of Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, Aswan, Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada are now able to use the code 011. The third mobile company's licence was obtained last July by a consortium led by the UAE's Etisalat Company for LE16.7 billion. According to Amr Badawi, executive director of the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority, operations to link the new network with the other two existing ones are underway. In the meantime, the rest of the country's regions will be able to access the same company services, once the second and third phases of coverage are complete. More crude available THE MINISTRY of Petroleum and Mineral Resources has an ambitious plan to accelerate the development of the newly discovered oil wells in the Gulf of Suez and the Western Desert. These wells are expected to increase Egypt's production of crude oil by 100,000 barrel per day (bpd). Wells in the Gulf of Suez, already contributing approximately 65 per cent of Egypt's oil, are expected to yield 60,000 bpd while those in the Western Desert will contribute 40,000 bpd. According to Petroleum Minister Sameh Fahmi, the plan aims to maximise the utilisation of the drilling and extraction facilities that already exist in these areas and to reduce production costs. The plan to extract more crude oil from the newly developed wells will be completed in a year. Two technical groups with representatives of the petroleum companies headed by a senior official from the ministry have been formed to see that the plan is implemented in due time. "The plan aims at making the utmost of the huge facilities that already exist in these areas. Extraction from the new wells will go side by side with production from nearby operating wells," said Abdel-Alim Taha, head of the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) and the one in charge of accelerating the development of the new wells in the Gulf of Suez.
