The Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources announced Wednesday the full repayment of overdue entitlements to foreign partners in the oil and gas production sector, bringing the debt to zero for the first time in years, after it peaked at about $6.1 billion in June 2024.
The arrears owed to foreign companies, upon which the government relies for extracting petroleum materials, accumulated in the context of the dollar crisis, but the influx of foreign financing to Egypt since the Ras El-Hekma agreement put the country on the path to eliminating these debts.
In a statement, the ministry described settling the arrears as a root-cause solution to one of the sector’s biggest hurdles in recent years. The move addresses past extraction slowdowns by foreign firms protesting overdue payments, which had severely dragged down domestic production.
The petroleum sector’s foreign direct investment balance — the difference between capital inflows and outflows — posted a surplus of about $600 million in 2024–2025. This marks the first surplus after years of deficits during the dollar crisis, which had dampened foreign companies’ appetite for the sector.
President El-Sisi issued directives to clear the debt of the petroleum sector by June 30.
In April, a source in the Ministry of Petroleum’s contracts department told Al Manassa that the government had allocated a portion of its own gas share to foreign operators to clear the sector’s debt and hit presidential targets.
The ministry noted in its statement that its immediate priority is to fast-track the development of new discoveries and bring them online as quickly as possible.
The government is under pressure to speed up new discoveries and bridge the local demand gap, as indicators show that gas production this year is at its lowest since 2023, while other data suggest that oil production in 2025 was the lowest since 1987.
Because gas production has declined since 2023, the country has had to rely on imports to plug a deficit estimated at about 1.2 billion cubic feet a day.
In a related development, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said today that the proceeds of the operating concession deal for the Gabal El-Zeit renewable energy plant, which was announced to be granted to the Emirati company Alcazar with a value reaching about $420 million, will be directed to the Ministry of Finance with the aim of contributing to reducing the public debt.
