Egypt Oil & gas learned that British Petroleum (BP) will begin production at its North Alexandria concession early 2017, rather than mid-2017, as originally planned.

Minister of Petroleum, Tarek El Molla said that “the offshore concession’s output will be roughly 450 million cubic feet per day in 2017 and reach 1.2 billion cubic feet per day by the end of 2019.”

BP announced this week it had been awarded three new offshore exploration blocks in Egypt and that it and its partners had committed to investment of $229m.