Cairo – Mubasher: Abed Ezz El Regal, CEO of the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC), said on Thursday that there were 41 new petroleum explorations in the fiscal year 2016/2017.

The new explorations include 28 for crude oil and 13 for natural gas, the CEO added, noting that these explorations contributed to increasing petroleum and gas reserves, in addition to meeting local market needs.

The average production of petrol amounted to 626,000 barrels of crude oil and condensates per day, 55% of which were produced from the Egypt’s Western Desert, Ezz El Regal said.

There is a plan to increase oil production to 670,000 barrels per day in the fiscal year 2017/2018, he revealed in a statement.

The EGPC CEO stated that the corporation has signed five oil and gas exploration agreements with $625 million investments, two of which are new, while the other three are amendments to agreements currently in force.

For the first time, EGPC entered into a partnership deal outside Egypt through participating with a 10% share in South Iraq project to produce oil in Faihaa field, Ezz El Regal said.

Meanwhile, minister of petroleum and mineral resources Tarek El-Molla said that the cost of Egypt’s petroleum product subsides has reached EGP 122.4 billion in 2017.

Egypt is planning to increase its production by 50% by June 2018 and has secured $31 billion in investments over the next three to four years to develop gas field explorations.