Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Tarek El Molla has met with Ajit Gupte, Indian Ambassador in Cairo, where they discussed ways to enhance bilateral cooperation in the fields of oil, gas, petrochemicals, hydrogen, biofuels, reducing emissions, and investment opportunities.

During the meeting, El Molla confirmed that there is fruitful cooperation with several Indian companies operating in Egypt, for example TCI Sinmar, which contributes to achieving successes in the field of petrochemicals and expands its investments and projects in Egypt in cooperation with Egyptian petrochemical companies.

El Molla stated that the oil and gas sector is currently implementing several projects for energy efficiency, reducing carbon emissions and benefiting from them economically, in addition to implementing projects to digitize the entire sector’s activities and linking them into a unified system to benefit the efficiency and speed of access to data and implementation of operations.

The Minister emphasized Egypt’s oil and gas industry’s strengths, including top-notch infrastructure and skilled personnel across various functions.

For his part, Gupte confirmed that his country imports a large portion of its oil and gas needs and seeks to convert a large proportion of these needs to natural gas and new and renewable energies instead of crude oil as part of its efforts to reduce carbon emissions in line with the global trend to reduce the impact of emissions on the climate.

Gupte stated that India seeks to make new discoveries that increase its production, and is already cooperating with the Egyptian side in implementing these projects by supplying equipment and drilling supplies, and that Indian companies are fully prepared to exchange expertise with the Egyptian petroleum sector to the benefit of both sides.

The Indian ambassador added that the fruitful strategic relations between the two countries have been going on for many years, and that Indian companies are interested in implementing projects to produce green hydrogen in Egypt. Several memorandums of understanding have already been signed in this regard, and preparations are being made to begin actual implementation and provide the required investments.

Gupte expressed his hope that Egypt will join the new global initiative to increase the use of biofuels, through which the expertise, policies and advanced technologies required to implement such projects will be shared in cooperation with 19 countries joining the initiative.