The Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) aims to increase refineries capacity to reach 30m tons of crude oil in the second half of 2017, Al Mal News reported.

Official resources at EGPC affirmed that when Mostorod refinery, affiliated to the Egyptian Refining Company, begins production, it will make the prospective leap in the Egyptian refineries.

The sources stated that the Egyptian Refining Company’s refinery will start production in April 2017, adding that the project will meet a huge part of the local market needs of high-quality oil derivatives.

The feeding energy of Mostorod project is roughly at 4.3m tons of mazot annually, of which Cairo Oil Refining Company (CORC) will supply approximately 3.5m tons. Roughly 1.2m tons of crude oil will be imported and refined by CORC with $3 difference per barrel, to produce the rest of the 800,000 tons of mazot.

The sources added that when the implementation of the projects is finalized, it will fill approximately 50% of the gap in the local market, which is the difference between production rate and consumption of oil derivatives.

In the last two years, the EGPC had raised the capacity of refineries from 26m tons to 28m tons of crude oil annually.

An EGPC report stated that overall investments in the development of the refinery field are roughly .

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