The Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS) issued a second international bid for foreign companies to supply 45 liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments until the end of 2016. The deadline for receiving offers will be the end of July, Chairman of EGAS Khaled Abdel Badie said in a statement to the Daily News Egypt. He added that the second bid has the same technical and financial conditions of the first bid, which was issued in October of last year. In October, EGAS offered a bid to supply LNG, and seven companies applied, including British Petroleum (BP), Vitol, Trafigura, and Golar, as well as three other companies. The awarded companies were Vitol, Noble Energy, and BP, and they are set supply 75 shipments of LNG within two years, beginning last March. The contract is subject to renewal. According to Abdel Badie, EGAS issued the second bid to supply 45 LNG shipments until December 2016, so that both bids would end at the same time. No foreign company took part in the second bid, since their offers were made days before the deadline. The EGAS chairman said that one shipment of LNG will be from 140,000 to 170,000 cubic metres, and will be enough to provide 500m cubic feet daily for six days. EGAS has signed agreements to import 90 LNG shipments over the next two years in the framework of the international bid and the direct agreement with Gazprom and Sonatrach. This is to secure a part of the additional requirements for power plants. Abdel Badie added that the contracts being signed with LNG supplyer companies stipulate a 30-day grace period to pay the shipment value from the date of its arrival to the country. EGAS recently signed an initial agreement with the Russian government company, Rosneft, to provide 24 LNG shipments over two years, starting from the last quarter of 2015. Abdel Badie said that these shipments are to supply the local market's LNG requirements and to fill the current gap between domestic production and consumption of natural gas until the completion of the new gas field development projects.
