CAIRO, August 24, 2018 - Foreign investment in Egypt's oil and gas sector rose to $10 billion in the 2017/2018 Fiscal Year (FY), Petroleum Minister Tarek El Molla said in an interview with state-run Al Ahram newspaper published on Friday. That is up by nearly a quarter from 8.1 billion in the previous year. Minister El Molla was quoted by the paper as saying he expected the same volume of investments in the current fiscal year. Egypt's fiscal year runs from July to June. Italian oil company Eni said last month that the production capacity of Egypt's giant Mediterranean Zohr gas field stood at 1.6 billion cubic feet a day and would reach 2 billion by September. Egypt plans to become a regional hub for the trade of liquefied natural gas after a string of major discoveries in the Mediterranean that are expected to make Egypt self-sufficient in gas by the end of 2018. The Zohr field, the largest natural gas discovery ever made in the Mediterranean, is located off Egypt's northern coast within the Shorouk block, some 190 km north of Port Said. The Italian multi-national oil and gas company Eni, which holds a 60 per cent stake in the Shorouk block, announced the start-up of the third production unit (T-2) of the Zohr gas field project, increasing its functional capacity to 1.2 bcf/d. Field production is expected to rise to 2.7 bcf/d by the end of 2019, transforming Egypt into a regional power hub. Once an energy exporter, Egypt has turned into a net importer in recent years, squeezed by declining production and increasing consumption. However, Egypt is back on track to be an exporter soon after a big number of recent discoveries across the country that attracted several international firms for oil exploration over the past few years.
