Egypt is targeting about 11 trillion cubic feet of additional natural gas reserves through its latest exploration bid round if drilling in the offered areas succeeds, a Petroleum Ministry source familiar with oil and gas production told Al Manassa.
Petroleum Minister Karim Badawi announced Wednesday the launch of Egypt’s 2026 international bid round for crude oil and gas exploration, offering 14 new areas to Egyptian and international companies. Eight are offered by the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS) in the Mediterranean Sea, Nile Delta, and North Sinai, and six are offered by the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) in the Gulf of Suez, Sinai, and the Western Desert.
The ministry’s move comes as Egypt faces a gap between natural gas production and domestic consumption. Production currently stands at about 4.2 billion cubic feet per day, compared with consumption of about 6.2 billion cubic feet per day.
Egypt needs to import about 2 billion cubic feet of gas per day to meet domestic demand, making increased local production a key priority for the petroleum sector in the coming years.
The source, who asked not to be named, said the 11 trillion cubic feet figure depends on drilling and exploration results and does not represent reserves already discovered. The ministry is counting on the new bid round to expand available gas resources in the coming years and support domestic production, the source said.
Successful exploration and development of new discoveries could increase domestic gas supplies and reduce reliance on imports, particularly if accompanied by infrastructure development to receive the new production and connect it to the national grid.
Alongside the exploration offerings, the ministry is preparing to establish a new gas facilities hub in the Mediterranean to collect and process gas that could be produced from new discoveries before feeding it into the national grid, according to the source.
The proposed hub would include facilities to receive, process, and separate gas components, as well as pipelines to collect and transport production and connect it to the national grid, allowing new volumes to enter the domestic supply system without requiring separate infrastructure for each discovery, the source said.
The plan is to collect production from several nearby fields at a single processing and connection point, reducing the cost of developing offshore discoveries and speeding up the use of their output once production begins, the source said.
The investment required to build the facilities hub will be determined after technical studies are completed and its location, design capacity, and required installations are set, the source said. Preliminary estimates for a project of this scale put the cost at about $1 billion if it includes processing units and pipelines for collection and connection to the grid, with costs potentially rising depending on production volumes and pipeline distances.
Construction would take about three years from the approval of designs and the start of work, according to preliminary estimates. The project would proceed alongside drilling and offshore field development programs so the facilities are ready to receive production when the new fields come online, the source said.
The Ministry of Petroleum’s previous bid round was announced last November and covered four oil and gas exploration areas in the Red Sea.
At the general assembly of the South Valley Egyptian Petroleum Holding Company in March, Badawi said interest expressed by several international companies in investing in the four areas reflected foreign investors’ confidence in Egypt’s petroleum sector.
