Over US $1bn to be invested in exploration of oil and gas in Egypt

Over US $1bn is set to be invested in exploration of oil and gas in Egypt. Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Tariq Al Mulla revealed the plans and said the objective is to stress on the need to focus on exploration activities and the speed of their completion to compensate for the natural decrease in production.

The billion dollar investment will come from two local oil and gas companies particularly Khalda Petroleum CO. (KPC) and Qarun Petroleum Company (QPC), each contributing invest US$ 830M and US$ 252M respectively over the course of the 2021-2022 fiscal year.

Khalda Petroleum’s burdget will cover drilling 35 exploration wells and 52 development wells as it seeks to achieve average daily production of about 130,000 barrels of crude oil and condensates, and 630 million cubic feet of natural gas in its concession areas in Western Sahara, Chairman Saeed Abdel Moneim said.

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Exploitation of oil and gas resources

Qarun Petroleum on the other hand will invest about US $252 million in the area on 24 development wells and 5 exploration wells over the same period. The investment will help boost annual production to about 9 million barrels of crude oil.

In recent years, the exploitation of oil and gas resources from the Western Desert has been neglected by players in this particular niche due, among other things, to exorbitant financial costs. According to Abdel Khaleq Faruq, the director of the Nile Center for Economic and Strategic Studies, many factors have hampered oil and gas exploration in the Western Desert region, including the fact that the region is full of mines left after World War I and WWII.

“This has made the exploration process difficult and expensive because some areas must be cleared before the actual drilling can be carried out,” commented Director Faruq.