On February 12th, 2004, H.E. Eng. Sameh Fahmy Minister of Petroleum, accompanied by the Industry and Energy committee members in Shura Council, and senior executives of the Egyptian petroleum sector have visited the liquefaction facility in Damietta. This project is currently underway and has the largest under construction capacity worldwide, 7.56 BCMY (4.4 BCMY Union Fenosa, 3.16 BCMY EGAS), it is scheduled to begin commercial production by the end of 2004, and LNG will be exported to Spain and Italy.


On February 29th, 2004, H.E. Eng Sameh Fahmy Minister of Petroleum visited the two LNG trains of the Egyptian LNG export project in Idku, accompanied by members of the Industry and Energy committee of People's Assembly headed by Dr. Amin Mubarak. The first train capacity is 3.6 MTPY, it will be on stream by mid 2005, Gaz de France will be the offtaker for the Idku LNG first train. An Agreement to purchase a similar quantity of LNG from the second train was signed with BG LNG Services. Early 2006, The LNG will be initially delivered to Lake Charles in the United States and later to Brindisi in Italy.


Eng. Sameh Fahmy pointed out that the rapid rise in natural Gas reserves in Egypt has supported export option, which can secure the flow of foreign currency to Egypt. The recently introduced economic model for investments has been applied on these projects to allow the petroleum sector to finance its share through international and regional funding institutions.