Natural gas contributes 70% to Egypt power plants: minister

70 percent of Egypt’s production of natural gas are allocated to meet the needs of power plants to generate electricity, Petroleum Minister Tarek El-Molla stated Thursday.

State’s approach for using renewable energy sources in generating electricity is expected to reduce the amount of used natural gas largely within the coming period, EL Molla stated.

The minister added that petroleum sector imports 40 percent of Egypt’s needs of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to fill the gap between production and consuming rates. He asserted that the recent discoveries are set to shrink  importing rates within the upcoming years.

Egyptian petroleum sector is expected to achieve self-sufficiency of natural gas  by 2022, El Molla noted, clarifying that the newly-discovered Zohr field owns massive reserves that can meet large part of state’s consumption of natural gas.

Minister El Molla said that Egypt is currently adopting plans to boost natural gas explorations and deepwater drilling notably after a number of reports asserted that there are more fields besides Zohr that need large investments to be explored.