The Egyptian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Tarek El Molla, has agreed with the Commissioner of the European Union (EU), Miguel Arias, to sign a strategic partnership memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Egypt and the EU. This came during the meeting held in Belgium, to discuss partnership with EU in the fields of oil and gas, Egypt Oil & Gas reports.

The meeting was attended by Egypt’s ambassador in Brussels, Khaled El Bakly, and Director General of Energy Affairs at the European Commission, Dominique Ristori.

The meeting was part of a series of meetings with several neighboring countries as well as a number of EU countries, to discuss cooperation in order to achieve Egypt’s plan to be a regional energy trading hub, El Molla stated adding that the EU is a main partner for the Egyptian oil and gas sector in the modernization program, which includes setting plans and strategies across the petroleum activities.

The two partners are seeking to develop their cooperation through a number of initiatives presented by the EU to support Egypt’s oil and gas projects, to develop human resources and to boost energy efficiency.

During the meeting, El Molla and Arias discussed setting a new strategy and discussed targeted investments in projects to expand pipelines below water surface in order to move natural gas from discovered fields in Europe to Egypt to be liquefied, then to be exported.

El Molla highlighted the importance of the new gas law and added that he agreed with Arias to visit Egypt with an EU delegation during the first quarter of 2018, to hold a forum and workshops on which many contribute.