Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Tarek El Molla announced that the Egyptian government has connected natural gas to 13 million housing units since the start of operation and until the end of January 2022.

He added that this saved about 234 million butane cylinders annually which came in line with the directions of President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi  to expand natural gas utilization to replace butane to alleviate the financial burden over the state’s budget for supporting butane cylinders.

This came during the periodical meeting, which was headed by El Molla in attendance of petroleum chairmen and officials, to showcase the latest updates of the natural gas connections to households as well as the Haya Karima (‘Decent Life’) initiative.

El Molla noted that there is an ambitious plan to link 1.2 million households to the natural gas grid during fiscal year (FY) 2021/22. He elaborated that the government is working on implementing this plan.

El Molla also said that natural gas is connected to 34 new regions for the first time during the current fiscal year, in addition to completing natural gas connections in other regions and installing 835,000 prepaid meters.

Furthermore, the meeting tackled the status of natural gas connections to develop the Egyptian rural areas under the Haya Karima initiative including 1,487 villages. El Molla called for coordination and cooperation with the stakeholders to implement this initiative indicating that natural gas has been delivered to 98 villages and the landing networks are under implementation for 100 villages, in addition to the ongoing field surveys for 142 villages.