Egypt Snubs LNG, Plans To Send Gas to Lebanon Via the Arab Gas Pipeline - JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY

September 23, 2021

Pat Davis Szymczak

Egypt says it is stopping gas supplies to the Egypt Liquefied Natural Gas (ELNG) export terminal at Idku near Alexandria immediately and that it will supply gas to the Damietta LNG plant only until year end as it prepares to redirect surplus gas exports to Lebanon via the Arab Gas Pipeline.

Jordan’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources announced in early September it would deliver Egyptian gas to Lebanon after oil ministers of nations responsible for the Arab Gas Pipeline (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon) met in Amman to agree on a regional response to Lebanon’s ongoing fuel and electricity crisis, local media reported.

The English language news site Egypttoday.com quoted Egyptian Minister Tarek El Molla as saying, “Egypt is working to speed up coordination for delivering Egyptian natural gas to Lebanon through Jordan and Syria.”

Lebanon is in a state of economic collapse that the World Bank has called one of the worst on record, and, because it lacks foreign currency to pay for energy imports, the country was forced to switch off its two main power plants in July for lack of fuel, plunging the country into a near total blackout.

Egyptian LNG to return to full operation - PETROLEUM ECONOMIST

Houston, 20 September 2019

Peter Ramsay

The 7.2mn t/yr Egyptian LNG (ELNG) facility will return to 100pc of nameplate capacity next month, the firm’s senior optimisation manager Tamer Abdelsalam told the Gastech conference in Houston. It is currently operating at 90pc capacity.

Full output is a far cry from the dark days of mid-2013 to mid-2019, when the volume of feed gas reaching the plant hovered at 13-15pc of design capacity. During that period, ELNG produced just 31mn m³ of LNG and exported 21 cargoes, bring in only $354mn in revenues, says Abdelsalam.

The return of ELNG, located at Idku, to full capacity may not, though, be followed swiftly by a full restart of Egypt’s other export terminal at Damietta. “That is for the government,” says Adelsalam. “They are taking the lead in negotiations around Damietta.”

Molla in talks with Petronas over Borollos gas field phase 9B - ENTERPRISE / AL BORSA

Sunday, 5 February 2017

Petroleum Minister Tarek El Molla discussed the USD 950 mn plan to develop phase 9B of the Borollos gas field with the head of Malaysia’s Petronas on Saturday, Al Borsa reported. The project involves drilling eight new wells with a daily capacity of 387 mcf.

Egyptian LNG (ELNG) is a joint venture between PETRONAS and partners Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation, Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company, BG Group, and Gaz de France.


The ELNG project comprises the development and operation of an LNG liquefaction plant and related infrastructure at Idku, approximately 50 kilometres east of Alexandria in Egypt. Currently, two trains are up and running, each at a capacity of 3.6 million tonnes per annum. PETRONAS’ capabilities in the project management and development of a fully-integrated LNG operation was again proven as ELNG set a record of being the world’s fastest developed LNG project – six years from the first exploration well to the lifting of the first cargo in 2005. The ELNG plant receives its feedstock from PETRONAS’ upstream operations in the offshore West Delta Deep Marine concession, in which it is a 50:50 equity partner.