Mohamed Adel February 13, 2016
The Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS) decreased the volume of imported gas by approximately 650m cubic feet per day compared to 700m feet in January.
The decline was a result of the decline of gross domestic consumption of natural gas, according to a senior official in EGAS.
The capacity of the two gas ships that facilitate the transport of gas is estimated at 1.2bn cubic feet per day.
The official at EGAS, who requested to remain anonymous, told Daily News Egypt that a liquefied natural gas shipment (LNG) will arrive at Sokhna port and the gas ships will receive it to infuse approximately 500m feet per day for a week.
EGAS will import 80 LNG shipments worth from $2.5bn to $3bn in 2016 to provide the needs of industrial sector and power plants. The shipments will provide a billion cubic feet per day to be infused into the national gas grid. The shipments will be distributed in 40 shipments to each gas ship docked at Sokhna port.
The gas shipments, planned to be imported upon the tender offered by EGAS in 2015, include shipments from Algeria’s Sonatrach, Russia’s Gazprom, and Swiss Vitol, as well as a number of gas trade global companies.
The source predicted that Egypt will continue to import nearly the same amount of gas over the next year. However, the early stages of the North Alexandria project have already been infused into the national gas grid, at a rate of 700m cubic feet per day. The Dahr field project has seen an infusion rate of 900m cubic feet per day.
According to the official, the imported volume of gas will compensate for the decline in the productivity of other gas fields and will provide for the needs of new power plants, which will start operation in conjunction with the production of the previous projects.
The gas consumption in power plants declined to about 2.7bn cubic feet per day compared to 2.8bn cubic feet in January.
The official said Egypt’s total gas consumption is currently estimated at 4.65bn cubic feet per day, 4bn cubic feet of which are provided by domestic production of the Egyptian fields.
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