Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Tarek El Molla said that the development of the Zohr field in the Shorouk concession area in the Mediterranean is proceeding well according to the plan. The project's plan aims to produce about one billion cubic feet of gas per day in the first stage by the end of 2017. The plan then moves on to the later stages, boosting production to about 2.7 billion cubic feet per day by the end of 2019. El Molla said that the total investments in the Zohr field will reach $8bn by the end of fiscal year (FY) 2017/2018, noting that the figure is huge in relation to the short time, which reflects the size of the efforts and challenges to begin production in time. He pointed out that the investments will total $16bn. According to the plan of Italian company Eni, the first stage will put out about one billion cubic feet of gas per day before the end of December. This figure is then to be increased gradually—as development continues—to reach 2.7 billion cubic feet per day in 2019. The total reserves are estimated at about 30 trillion cubic feet. El Molla noted that the Zohr field in the eastern Mediterranean stimulated more international companies to increase their investments, hoping to find more discoveries, which could make Egypt a strategic energy hub in the Middle East. He added that over the course of the past few years, several companies were able to find gas in the Mediterranean, after a long period of operations that started in the early 1970s. These efforts were reinforced with the achievement of the latest discoveries in Egypt's deep waters of the Mediterranean Sea, known as Zohr.
