Egypt's Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Tarek El Molla, met with Yvan Gil Pinto, the Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs, and his delegation, who are visiting Egypt to explore ways of enhancing cooperation in various fields. The meeting focused on the potential areas of collaboration between the two countries in the oil, gas, and petrochemical sectors. The Venezuelan Minister expressed his satisfaction with the "fruitful meeting" he had with several Egyptian petroleum companies. He stressed the importance of reactivating the joint Egyptian-Venezuelan committee and strengthening the partnership with Egyptian petroleum companies, given their distinguished experiences and capabilities. He also mentioned that Venezuela currently produces about one million barrels of crude oil per day and aims to double it and increase its exports. He said that Venezuela is witnessing a rapid growth of petroleum projects as part of its economic recovery phase and that it needs Egyptian technical and administrative expertise. Furthermore, he suggested expanding the cooperation with Egypt in the mining sector, as Venezuela has a large untapped mining wealth. El Molla, on his part, emphasized the strong historical ties between the two countries politically and economically and the full readiness of the petroleum sector to support and expand the cooperation. He added that Egyptian petroleum sector companies have acquired remarkable experience and qualifications in recent years in designing, implementing, and managing major projects inside and outside Egypt. He also recalled that the petroleum sector had cooperated with Venezuela in the past to implement several projects, such as hosting over 70 Venezuelan engineers for theoretical and practical training in Enppi training centers. He said that Egypt is fully prepared to resume the cooperation channels and modalities. The meeting concluded with an agreement to form a working team that includes experts from both sides to develop a road map for cooperation in the coming period in various petroleum fields. This is expected to lead to a memorandum of understanding that will be signed in that framework. Moreover, a delegation from the Egyptian petroleum sector is planned to visit Venezuela to examine the proposed aspects of cooperation.
