Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Tarek El Molla announced the launch of the second phase of the MIDOR refinery expansion project during an inspection tour of the facility.

The new expansions will include four new warehouses with a total capacity of 400,000 barrels of crude and 290,000 barrels of petroleum products.

Also, this phase includes a new nitrogen production unit, an electricity distribution station with a capacity of 49 megawatts in addition to a station for declining natural gas depression at a capacity of 1.4 million cubic meters per day (mmcm/d).

El Molla elaborated that this project is one of the national projects that started in 2016 which aims to increase domestic production and close the gap between local production and consumption. The expansion project costs $2.4 billion to raise the productivity by 60% to reach 160,000 barrels per day (bbl/d), El Molla said.

MIDOR Chairman Gamal El Qaraesh stated that 87% of the project has been completed in addition to modernizing the existed units and raising their efficiency.