Gas delivered early BRITISH Gas (BG) Egypt announced this week the delivery of gas from the West Delta Deep Marine concession Phase IV project (WDDM IV) to the Egyptian domestic market one month ahead of schedule. Located approximately 120km offshore of Alexandria in the Mediterranean, the upstream development was undertaken through BG Egypt's joint operating company, Burullus Gas Company, in collaboration with Saipem, the drilling and installation contractor. According to Ian Hewitt, president of BG Egypt, the success of the project lies in the cooperation of the Egyptian Ministry of Petroleum with the companies involved in maintaining field production. All subsea structures were set up entirely in Egypt by Petrojet, an affiliate of the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC). Active in the country's natural gas business for over 17 years, BG Egypt operates the largest share of gas production, accounting for 40 per cent of the country's gas output, which supplies both domestic and international markets. As operator and holder of 50 per cent equity, BG Egypt was awarded the WDDM concession in 1995. Two fields, Scarab and Saffron, were brought onstream in March 2003 delivering gas to the domestic market. WDDM IV brings the number of producing wells to 31. Joint public-private success THE AMERICAN Chamber of Commerce held a conference last week to discuss the scope of public-private partnership projects in the transportation sector. Painting a future picture of the transportation sector in Egypt, Minister of Transportation Mohamed Lotfi Mansour forecast LE67 billion in investments to be piped into this booming sector through public-private partnerships in the coming few years. Public-private transportation projects aim to ensure the safety of passengers and goods, as well as improving the sector's infrastructure which, in turn, helps attract more foreign investments and creates job opportunities, according to Mansour. The conference discussed 17 projects to be implemented jointly by the government and private business in the ports of Alexandria, Dekheila, Sokhna, Adabiya, Damietta and East Port Said. "The tenders for these public-private projects will be announced by the middle of the current year," stated Mansour. "This is in addition to four projects to build free highways, two railways and seven railway stations." Mohamed Nada, head of Public-Private Partnerships at the ministry, further revealed that already two public- private projects have begun. The first involves transferring 162km of the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road into a free road, at a total cost of LE1.2 billion. "The project will be co-financed by the International Finance Corporation [IFC]," Nada noted. "The second project will be the 285km Alexandria-Port Said Free Road, which will also be co-financed by the IFC," he continued. This project costs LE1 billion, and will also include extending the road by 282km in its second phase to reach Marsa Matrouh. While AmCham Chairman Omar Mehanna asserted that holding such conferences "helps promote private- public partnership projects abroad," representatives of the IFC hailed increasing public-private partnerships in Egypt over the last several years. Another six partnership projects are in the works, most importantly the ring road which will connect northern and southern Greater Cairo, home to 24 million residents.
