Many foreign companies will be interested in investing in projects to be raised in March's Economic Summit, said Abu Bakr Ibrahim, Ganoub El-Wadi Petroleum Holding chairman. The Economic Summit represents a cornerstone for Egypt to present investment opportunities in all sectors, and especially in the petroleum and mineral wealth sector, he added. Data is currently being prepared and collected to search and prospect for oil and gas by the end of 2015. It will also be used to put a number of areas in other tenders within the coming years, Ibrahim said. He added that an international tender has been launched to search and prospect for oil and gas in 10 areas, six of which are marine areas and four inland. Data on these areas are available and are close to producing fields, with few risks evident in these areas. According to Ibrahim, many foreign companies are interested and the current tender is a promising one. The deadline for applying is the end of March. He also indicated that, during the 2012 tender, new companies that have never worked in Egypt before joined. They expect that this would happen once more through the oil projects that will be presented in the Economic Summit. The Ministry of Petroleum is said to have determined which projects to launch at the summit, which will be held in Sharm El-Sheikh in mid-March. They include 12 projects, eight of which are in the refining and petrochemicals sectors, with investments at $4.13bn. There will also be four additional projects for raw materials, products and mineral wealth pipelines worth $1.98bn.
The total cost of the refining, petrochemicals and mineral wealth projects to be implemented reached roughly $6.4bn.
