Egypt’s aims to attract $2.5 billion worth of new investments in its oil sector with a plan of issuing as much as 18 oil concessions to be offered on bidding, the oil minister was quoted as saying on Friday.
The country’s proven reserves of oil and gas rose to 18.3 billion barrels equivalent in the year to end-June 2010 and Egypt expects to boost them to 20 billion over the next two years, the state news agency said in August.
The ministry is eyeing boosting crude oil and condensates production to 720,000 barrels per day and will seek to dig about 350 new oil exploration wells, Sameh Fahmy, petroleum and mineral resources minister, said in state al-Ahram newspaper.
The oil ministry which had said Egypt’s proven reserves of oil and oil condensates were about 4.4 billion barrels, expected domestic consumption of natural gas and petroleum based products to reach 75 million tonnes in 2011-2012, the newspaper added.
The ministry planned to issue new concessions in as much as 18 locations in the Gulf of Suez, Sinai, and Egypt’s Western and Eastern deserts, Fahmy said.