Since late 2014, the Egyptian government has signed more than 62 production sharing contracts for upstream private investment in the oil and gas sector, according to Mohamed El-Masry, Chairman of the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC). El-Masry added, on the sidelines of the INTERGAS-VII, Oil, Gas and petrochemicals conference on Tuesday in Cairo, that an additional 12 contracts were signed in the pipeline sector. El-Masry indicated that the government has taken decisive measures to further resuscitate the energy sector in Egypt. Those include "security, by boosting and diversifying and improving energy efficiency", and "sustainability by addressing debt build-up and phasing out of subsidies in a socially responsible manner". This is in addition to "governance by improving and modernising the oil and gas sector's governance and encouraging private sector investment". With those measures in place, the government was able to renegotiate gas prices in existing agreements, reducing IOCs arrears by half during the past year, and implementing the first phase of a five year plan for energy subsidy reform that resulted in reduction of subsidies by EGP 40bn, amongst several other positive outcomes. He further indicated that Egypt has great oil and gas potential in the Mediterranean and Nile Delta in the Western Desert and in the Gulf of Suez.
