A press release to Egypt Oil&Gas stated that Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Tarek El Molla, met with Country Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell Egypt, Gasser Hanter, in the presence of Shell’s Executive Vice President, Sami Iskandar, and the Ministry’s First Undersecretary for Gas Affairs, Mohamed Moanes. The meeting included discussion on the company’s plans for exploration, development, and drilling new wells in its fields in Egypt’s Western Desert and Mediterranean.

The minister and his attendees reviewed Shell’s plans to drill 3 new wells in the Western Desert during April 2017 and ways to speed up starting the development of the 8 wells in phase B9 in the Mediterranean as well as drilling two new exploratory wells as a part of the company’s targets to increase production. The company plans to increase the Western desert production from 130,000b/d of condensates to be 200,000b/d, and to increase production from the Mediterranean from around 0.5mcf/d to be around 1bcf/d of natural gas.

During the meeting, the Egyptian Ministry and Shell agreed on forming a joint group to study the work programs and future plans and to set mechanisms to be followed. The minister and shell further agreed that Shell will contribute in trainings to boost efficiency and abilities of the youth in the sector.

Shell’s Executive VP, Sami Iskandar, said that Egypt has many investment opportunities in the coming period that encourages pumping more innestors to the sector.