Egypt seeks to connect natural gas to 3M housing units by 2022

CAIRO – 28 April 2018: Egypt’s mineral resources sector seeks to connect natural gas to three million housing units in light of the medium-term sustainable development strategy (2018/19-2021/2022), according to an infograph published by the Planning Ministry.

The sector aims to diversify the energy mix to include natural gas by 44 percent, petroleum products (39%), coal (9%) and renewable energy (8%) by fiscal year 2020/21.

It targets enhancing the capacity of refineries by 10 percent to reach 41 million tons a year, in addition to completing nine projects to develop refineries with investments of $8.3 billion.

The sector further aims to increase production of petroleum products by some 5.8 billion tons a year, and implement programs for rationalizing energy consumption in the petroleum sector, which will save some $4 billion annually.

Egypt’s Petroleum Ministry aims to increase its annual production of gasoline, diesel, butane gas and jet fuel by 11.6 million tons in the next four years, at an investment of $8.3 billion, boosting total production to around 28.5 million tons, up from the current 16.9 million tons.

Egypt targets producing 3.113 million tons of gasoline, 6.603 million tons of diesels, 481,000 tons of butane gas and some 1.438 million tons of jet fuel over the next four years.

Egypt’s natural gas production is expected to reach some six billion cubic feet a day by the end of fiscal year 2017/18.

Egypt’s gas production currently stands at 5.5 billion cubic feet a day, after adding some 1.6 million cubic feet as a result of starting production from four projects, including the giant Zohr gas field.

The new gas discoveries are expected to turn Egypt into a net exporter of natural gas as the country is expected to halt gas imports by mid 2018.