Reuters Staff
CAIRO, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Egypt’s giant new offshore Zohr gas field in the Mediterranean is set to be producing 500 million cubic feet per day by the end of 2017, Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said on Saturday.
The country imports peak at 10-12 shipments of natural gas per month, Ismail told reporters at the General Authority For Investment, adding that imports should decline significantly once the field starts producing.
Discovered in 2015 by Italy’s Eni with an estimated 30 trillion cubic feet of gas, the Zohr field is due to start producing in December.
Egypt’s own natural gas output rose to about 5.1 billion cubic feet per day in 2017 from 4.4 billion cubic feet in 2016 with the start of production from the first phase of BP’s North Alexandria project.
The country has been seeking to speed up production from recently discovered fields, with an eye to halting imports by 2019 and achieving self-sufficiency.
(Reporting by Momen Abdel Khalek; writing by Nadine Awadalla; editing by Mark Heinrich)
SOURCE
