Minister of Petroleum Sherif Ismail witnessed Thursday the signing of two agreements between Middle East Oil Refinery Company (MIDOR) and UOP international. The agreements are to facilitate the creation of engineering designs and acquiring licences for building new units to expand MIDOR‘s oil refinery laboratory with investments reaching approximately $1.4bn. The expansion of MIDOR's oil refinery lab aims at increasingthe operational capacity of the laboratory to reach 160,000 barrels instead of 100, Ismail announced. With the project's completion, the yearly production capacity of the laboratory will increase to reach 245,000 tonnes of butane, about 1.3m tonnes of high octane gasoline, 3.2m tonnes of diesel fuel with European specifications, 570,000 tonnes of coal and 135,000 tonnes of sulphur, said the CEO of MIDOR, Mohamed Abdel-Aziz. The signing is among a series of agreements witnessed by the ministry in context of its programme to develop oil refinery laboratories with additional units to promote local production of petroleum products and meet local market needs. The agreements include a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS) and the Jordanian-Egyptian FAJR Company.
