The first day of the 8th Egypt Oil & Gas Convention featured a live interview with Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Tarek El Molla who shared the key developments in the oil and gas industry, especially after the success of COP27. The live interview was conducted by Mohamed Fouad, Founder and CEO of Egypt Oil & Gas, and for the first time members of the petroleum sector had the exclusive opportunity to engage with El Molla by submitting their questions on social media platforms.

El Molla talked about the role that Egypt and the East Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF) countries are looking forward to playing regarding the European Union (EU)’s energy needs, in the mid to long-term. The minister started explaining the oil and gas sector’s Modernization Project, which began in 2016, in which one of the pillars was to make Egypt a regional energy hub, specifically in terms of oil and gas. Egypt worked on several levels to enable this regional hub vision as it solved arbitration disputes, re-operated liquefaction plants, and managed to shift from an importer to an exporter of gas by enhancing production through existing or new exploration projects.

“Egypt has sought to export natural gas to Europe since 2016, before Zohr production, and resolved arbitration issues because the country had ambition plan and vision to be implemented,” El Molla noted.

The minister further talked about the Middle Management program, which is an important pillar of the Modernization project. El Molla highlighted having a database of all the sector’s capabilities and talents to refer to when needed. The minister stated that the sector’s success is in unity, not in having scattered teams.

The Middle Management program aims to help potential talents gain experience and skills, and the ministry agreed with corporate leaders to be the participants in the program and put them in executive programs, not only traditional training programs in classrooms, but on-job-training, El Molla explained.

The minister further talked about the digitalization program, and how it helps ensure the safety of oil and gas operations. El Molla said that in the oil and gas sector you cannot develop without becoming strong in safety, and this will not be achieved without science. In the past six to seven years, around $1.2 trillion were invested in the oil and gas sector in Egypt, El Molla stated, referring to the role of middle management, and health, safety & environment (HSE) investments in the past years, which are considered as change agents in the sector.

El Molla also talked about the success of the Egypt Upstream Gateway as a part of the sector’s digitalization and modernization. “All Egyptian petroleum companies had subscribed to EUG which is one of the significant success stories of the sector digitalization and there are some countries that started to follow our footsteps,” the minister noted.