RIYADH: Seeking to expand production from the largest Mediterranean gas field, Khaled Mowafi, chairman of Belayim Petroleum Co., has announced Egyptian authorities will invest $1.2 billion during the fiscal year 2023-2024 in the Zohr gas field.
The company, also known as Petrobel, is a joint firm between the Italian giant ENI and the state-owned Egyptian General Petroleum Corp..
The budget for the next fiscal year includes the implementation of an ambitious plan to intensify the development activities of the field through the expansion of drilling new wells and repairing and re-completing others, Mowafi said during a meeting of the General Assembly of Petroshorouk Co., which is operating in the Zohr gas field.
He went on to say that projects will be undertaken to increase the efficiency of the facilities at the onshore production plant.
Mowafi also reviewed the amended budget of the current fiscal year 2022-2023, noting that work will continue to develop the southern region of the field, the well “Zohr-18,” which was successfully drilled, completed and placed on the production map in December 2022.
Egyptian exports jumped 19.2% in first 11 months of 2022
Egyptian exports increased by 19.2 percent to hit $46.9 billion during the first 11 months of 2022, compared to $39.3 billion during the same period a year earlier, according to government data.
Turkiye topped the countries to which Egyptian exports went during the first 11 months of 2022, with a value of $3.5 billion, followed by Spain with $3.3 billion, Italy with of $3.1 billion, then Saudi Arabia with $2.2 billion followed, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics said on Feb. 8.
The top 10 countries, which also include the US, the UAE, South Korea, the Netherlands, and China, accounted for 45.1 percent of the total value of Egyptian exports across the globe, at a value of $21.2 billion during the first 11 months of 2022.
Egypt’s headline inflation increased to 25.8% in January
Egypt’s annual urban consumer price inflation jumped to a higher-than-expected 25.8 percent in January, its fastest in more than five years and up from 21.3 percent in December, data from statistics agency CAPMAS showed.
The rise followed a series of currency devaluations starting in March 2022, a prolonged shortage of foreign currency and continuing delays in getting imports into the country.
January inflation was the highest since December 2017, a year after a steep devaluation.
Economists had expected a reading of 23.75 percent, according to the median forecast in a Reuters poll of 14. Five analysts had forecast that core inflation would climb to 26.6 percent from 24.4 percent in December.
Headline inflation increased across the board, but was driven especially by higher prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages, which make up 32.7 percent of the index's basket.
(With input from Reuters)
