The Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Karim Badawi stated that the sector’s plan for 2025 include accelerating the production wheel and intensifying research and exploration programs, exploiting the refining and petrochemicals capacities, expanding the use of natural gas in addition to launching the mining digital platform to attract more investments to this vital sector.

This came during his speech at Al-Ahram Energy conference titled “Energy transition and Sustainable Development: Challenges and Hopes” attended by several ministers and officials.

He added that the integrated work with the government under the leadership of the Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, the close cooperation with foreign partners, and the ministry’s launch of incentive packages last August, resulted in important positive indicators for the return of investment in oil and gas production.

He pointed to the most notably achievements involved that the Italian company Eni bringing in a driller to work on drilling additional wells in the Zohr gas field at the end of December 2024, and Exxon Mobil drilling the first exploratory gas well in the West Mediterranean, in addition to bp accelerating the production plan for the second phase of the development of the offshore Raven field, as well as the efforts and plans of Apache, Shell, IPR, ADES and other companies to increase crude oil production in the Western and Eastern Deserts.

Badawi pointed out that the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources (MoPMR) has offered 61 investment opportunities to increase exploration and production in the Mediterranean and Eastern and Western Deserts, which also include encouraging production activities from brownfields with appropriate investments, noting that these investment opportunities are being promoted using the latest digital transformation methods through the Egypt Upstream Gateway (EUG).

Moreover, the Minister reviewed the six main pillars of the MoPMR current work strategy. He also thanked foreign partners for the return of pumping new investments, noting that there are 57 international companies operating in Egypt and seeking to benefit from the encouraging investment opportunities to intensify research and exploration programs and increase production.