A source from the petroleum sector stated that Royal Dutch Shell reduced its investments in Burullus and Rasheed gas fields to $158.9m for maintenance and operating expenses over the current fiscal year, reported Daily News Egypt.

Shell allocated operating expenses of $96.7m to Burullus fields and $38m for periodical maintenance to the wells, while it allocated $22.7m for the operating expenses of Rosita field in Rasheed’s concession, and $1.4m for maintenance operations.

There has been no increase in the performance of the natural gas production rates, on the contrary the source noted that Burullus and Rasheed fields’ production declines on by about 10mcf/d of gas.

Shell was planning to allocate an extra $1.4m for investments in the current fiscal in order to establish 9B phase project in Burullus. Yet, the company decided to postpone injecting further investments until obtaining part of its dues estimated at around $1.3b owed by the Egyptian government.

Egypt Oil&Gas previously reported that the Egyptian Ministry of Petroleum owed Shell $1.3b, up from $1.1b in July. These amounts were owed against the ministry’s purchases of  Shell’s production from Rasheed Concession and British Gas (BG)’s Burullus concession which Shell recently obtained.