EFG Hermes, one of the Middle East’s biggest investment banks, has praised Egyptian investors’ plans to import natural gas from Israel, labelling the move as an “important development”.
The group quoted “media sources” as saying that Dolphinous Holdings, a private company run by a group of Egyptian investors, signed a deal last week to import at least 5 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas from the Israeli offshore gas field, Tamar. The deal sets the price at US$240 per cubic meter, according to EFG Hermes.
The group said it believes the deal would need six months to one year to get regulatory approval.
“This is an important development, as we estimate that the reported gas volume represents 15 percent of Egypt’s total industrial consumption,” the group said in a statement. The agreement would “free up more gas allocations to local plants and potentially improve utilization rates; particularly in steel, cement and nitrogen fertilizers,” it added.
Egypt’s domestic gas consumption is 52bcm, of which 57 percent goes to power generation, 25 percent to the industrial sector, and the remainder to petroleum, residential heating and transport activities, the group explained.
