The Egyptian Natural Gas Holding company (EGAS) has stated that Egypt will aim to import between 110 and 120 cargoes of LNG in 2017, according to Reuters.

Ahram Online wrote that separately, three trade sources said that EGAS had purchased ten cargoes of LNG from trade house Trafigura and one cargo from PetroChina earlier in June.

The news comes after Egypt shipped an LNG cargo of 60.000 metric tons to Japan. The deal was described as a “rare” one by Bloomberg, as Egypt is in the middle of a huge fuel buying binge to meet its increasing domestic energy consumption.

Egypt currently produces about 3.9 bcf/d of gas per day and imports about another 1-1.1bcf/d.