A source at the Egyptian Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources stated to Egypt Oil&Gas that Egypt will  generalize the usage of coal in manufacturing as an alternative to natural gas starting May 2017. The usage of coal will be increased gradually until the government prepares warehouses that are suitable to store coal.

The Egyptian government insists on using coal as a source of energy in the industrial sector in order to save natural gas to support electricity power plants.

The source pointed out that the usage of coal in high consuming and middle consuming factories will help in solving 50% of the energy crises in Egypt, since providing the saved natural gas to power stations will prevent any electricity outage in summer 2017. Furthermore, the usage of coal will save foreign currency as it will save an amount of the imports bills as the price of importing gas currently ranging between $10 and $13 per 1m thermal units.

Moreover, the government stipulated the approval of the Ministry of Environment before using coal in order to avoid pollution as the usage of coal must follow global environmental standards.