An Official Source at the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) stated exclusively to Egypt Oil&Gas that the Egyptian Government allocated $3b for gas imports in 2018, raising the gas imports allocations by $500m as it was $2.5b during 2017. The increase aims to reduce the gap between gas production and electricity power plants consumption.

The source pointed out that EGPC will discuss the possibility of importing 2bcf to 4bcf of LNG annually in order to overcome the gas production shortage. He also highlighted that Egypt will continue importing gas until it starts extracting gas successfully from Zohr field. Then, Egypt will stop importing gas whenever the production level reaches 6bcf/d of natural gas and 28500b/d of condensates in the light of the current implemented 13 projects to develop natural gas fields with $33m of investments.

In addition, he stated that 2020 will be the last year of importing natural gas, if there was no new  power plants or new power intensive factories.