The government plans to bring the Giza and Fayoum natural gas fields online by the end of 2018, Egypt Oil & Gas reports.

The combined output of the two fields is expected to be between 500 million standard cubic feet per day (mscf/d) and 700 mscf/d.

The Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Tarek El Molla, recently visited the fields.

He also visited the future site of an onshore gas treatment facility at the Raven natural gas field. The facility, a project of Rashid Petroleum Company (Rashpetco), is projected to start treating natural gas from the Raven field next year.

Earlier this year, the Taurus and Libra fields were successfully brought online, producing 700 mscf/d of natural gas from nine wells, El Molla noted.

The development of these fields is part of a project to extract natural gas from the North Alexandria/Deep West Mediterranean fields. The ministry expects production from the project to reach 1.6 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d).