by Marwa Yahya
CAIRO, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- The Eastern Mediterranean (EastMed) pipeline agreement signed by Cyprus, Greece and Israel recently has raised questions about its impact on Egypt that is striving to become a regional hub for trade and distribution of liquified gas to Europe.
Medhat Youssef, former chairman of Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation, denied that the EastMed gas pipeline will have any impact on Egypt as a hub for energy trade and exchange in the region.
"Energy-hungry Europe, which is currently largely dependent on supplies from Russia and the Caucasus region, needs many sources to meet its large and increasing demands," Youssef told Xinhua.
The EastMed pipeline is scheduled to run across the Mediterranean Sea from the gas reserves which have been found off Israel in recent years to Crete Island, western Greece and then to Italy.
"The project, with a rough budget of 6 billion U.S. dollars, is expected to satisfy only five percent of the European Union's natural gas needs after five years," Youssef said, adding that a third of the quantity is secured from Russia and the rest comes from other countries.
Still, the project is also fraught with political and logistical complexities amid regional energy race, he added.
Technically, the EastMed pipeline will be costly because the digging should be done at 3,000 meters deep in the sea and it will take a long time to put it into operation, he explained.
However, Egypt has a strategic geographic location and well-established energy infrastructure with two gas liquidation stations in Idku and Damietta.
A series of gas fields have been discovered in Egypt during the past few years, the largest of which is the Zohr field in the Mediterranean.
Zohr field, which brought Egypt back to the export market after two uprisings that caused several years of instability, has an estimated 30 trillion cubic feet of reserve and its productions stood at 2.7 billion cubic feet per day at the end of 2019.
"Compared to other countries, Egypt provides most suitable and cheapest facilities to transfer gas to the eastern Mediterranean countries," the oil expert said, explaining that the gas from Israel and Cyprus will also pass through the gas liquefaction stations in Egypt.
He hailed the infrastructure of Egypt's gas pipelines that are extended to connect Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Israel.
On Jan. 14, 2019, Egypt launched the East Mediterranean Gas Forum with the participation of seven countries to create a regional gas market, cut infrastructure costs and offer competitive prices.
Gas reserve in the region is estimated at 122 trillion cubic feet, according to Egyptian official statistics.
On Sept. 19, 2018, Egypt and Cyprus signed an agreement to construct an undersea pipeline worth of 1 billion U.S. dollars, linking Cyprus' Aphrodite gas field to Egypt's gas liquidation stations.
On Jan. 15, Egypt started importing natural gas from Israel under a 15-billion U.S. dollar deal.
According to official statistics in 2019, Egypt produces 7.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 630,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
The country's consumption of oil products has been reduced from 39 million tons in 2015-2016 to 31 million tons in 2018-2019 after the government adopted a new reform program for pricing oil products.
Gamal al-Qalyoubi, professor of oil and energy engineering of American University in Cairo, said that the seven participating countries of the East Mediterranean Gas Forum "share a vision of regional integration that by all means will serve Egypt as an energy regional hub."
Egypt announced in 2018 that it had achieved self-sufficiency in natural gas which means that the gas imported from Israel and Cyprus "will be allocated for export to global markets via Egypt," al-Qalyoubi told Xinhua.
He pointed out that Europe is thirsty for energy and its needs are much more than the production of Israel and Cyprus, which will keep Egypt's role in the regional energy equation.
Unlike Israel and Cyprus that depend on direct gas exploration and trading, Egypt has opened the markets to receive other countries' production and resell it as a mediator, he noted.
