Egypt has increased natural gas imports from Israel by 26% since mid-May, raising daily inflows to 1.2 billion cubic feet from 950 million at the start of the month, as rising electricity demand ahead of summer pushed grid load to its highest level in a year, a petroleum ministry source said on Monday.
Load on the national electricity network has climbed to approximately 34,000 megawatts per day, a 9% increase on the same period last year, forcing power stations to burn an additional 250 million cubic feet of gas daily, the source, who requested anonymity, told Al Manassa.
The extra supply has been fed directly into Egypt’s national gas grid and routed to the electricity and industrial sectors. The source said the increase would “help stabilize the domestic gas market and meet the needs of the highest-consuming sectors,” particularly as summer heat intensifies fuel demand at generation plants.
Egypt uses Israeli gas imports to bridge the gap between domestic production; currently running at around 4.2 billion cubic feet per day, and total consumption, even as the petroleum ministry works to reduce that structural dependence through expanded local output.
On May 21, the government announced a significant new find by Agiba Petroleum, a joint venture between Egypt’s state oil authority and Italy’s Eni, in the Western Desert. Preliminary estimates put the discovery, the largest the company has made in 15 years, at 330 billion cubic feet of gas, 10 million barrels of condensate, and crude totaling 70 million barrels of oil equivalent.
The import increase is underpinned by a sweeping bilateral supply agreement. Last August, Israeli company NewMed Energy, a partner in the offshore Leviathan gas field, formalized a revised export contract worth $35 billion, the largest single export deal Israel has signed.
The original 2019 agreement had committed Israel to export around 60 billion cubic meters to Egypt through 2030; the amended terms extended the relationship to 2040 and nearly doubled the contracted volume to 130 billion cubic meters.
Pricing under both the original and revised agreements is indexed to Brent crude. The current rate reportedly stands at $7.70 per million British thermal units.
