Egypt to reduce imports of LNG to 80 cargoes in 2017/18

Egypt has been trying to speed up the development of recent gas discoveries with a view to halting imports by 2019.

Egypt expects to increase its LNG production by 1 billion ft³ per day by the end of the current financial year to reach 6.2 billion ft³ per day.

Gas production will get a big boost from Italian national oil company Eni's Zohr field, discovered in 2015 with an estimated 30 trillion ft³ of gas in place.

That field is expected to come into production at the end of 2017 and will save Egypt billions of dollars in hard currency that would otherwise be spent on imports.