The Egyptian Ministry of Petroleum announced to Egypt Oil&&Gas that the government plans to increase local production of diesel to 2.6m tons per day starting 2017 in order to avoid any crisis in filling stations. Egypt also plans to support petrochemicals and decrease butane subsidies.

The ministry of petroleum further allocated $32.7b to finance 12 new development projects in natural gas fields to produce 5.5bcf/d of gas and 20,000b/d of crude oil by the end of 2019. The development projects will be conducted on wells in areas including Zohr, North of Alexandria, Nooros, and Atoll fields, in addition to Salamat field and phase B9 in Deep West Delta field. These development projects will add 6.2bcf/d of gas to the Egyptian local production which will compensate for the natural decline in old fields and will boost Egypt’s total production.

Egypt aims to pump natural gas to 7.4m households by the end of 2018, taking into consideration that the cost of delivery natural gas to 3m dwellings is about EGP 2b. Egypt will also establish 8 new projects in the petrochemicals sector to produce around 3m tons per year of petroleum products, in addition to increasing refineries production to be between 8m  to 10m tons of petroleum products.