The Egyptian Ministry of Petroleum has signed a deep-water oil and gas exploration agreement with Royal Dutch Shell and Malaysia's Petronas worth around $1 billion to drill eight wells in the country's West Nile Delta region, local media reported. Citing a statement issued by the ministry on Saturday, Daily News Egypt said an additional $10 million agreement was signed with the U.K.'s Rockhopper, Kuwait Energy, and Canada’s Dover Corporation to drill four wells in the Western Desert.
The English daily quoted Minister Tarek El-Molla as saying that the launch of international tenders and agreements in Egypt’s oil and gas sector would continue in full swing, to develop Egypt’s resources, thereby increasing production to meet domestic market needs and reduce imports.
He added that the reforms undertaken in the country had yielded "outstanding results", with the petroleum sector having signed 63 new agreements for the exploration of oil and gas since June 2014 with a total investment of around $15 billion.
"Egypt aspires to become a regional gas hub, following the discovery of the giant Zohr gas field in offshore Egypt, the largest gas field ever discovered in the Mediterranean, with reserves estimated at 30 trillion cubic feet," the daily said, adding this increase would almost double the field's output capacity, bringing Egypt a step closer to ending its dependency on LNG imports.
(Anadolu Agency)
