CYPRIOT gas will be transferred to Egypt to be processed and liquefied before being exported to Europe, according to two memoranda of understanding (MoUs) signed on Monday.
President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi and his Cypriot counterpart Nikos Christodoulides chaired the signing ceremony held during the opening of the three-day Egypt Energy Show (EGYPES 2025) in Cairo.
According to the first MoU, gas from Block 6 in the offshore Cypriot Cronos Field will be sent to Egypt for processing at the existing Zohr Field facilities in Port Said before being liquefied at the Damietta Liquified Natural Gas Plant (LNG) to be exported to European markets.
The agreement involves Italy’s Eni Group and the French TotalEnergies, which together own a 50 per cent stake in the Cronos Gas Field. Eni also owns 50 per cent of the Damietta LNG Plant. According to Eni, the Cronos Field, discovered in 2022, has more than three trillion cubic feet (TCF) of gas reserves.
The agreement facilitates the swift commercialisation of Cypriot gas, taking advantage of Egypt’s existing infrastructure including its export facilities, said Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi.
The second MoU outlines a framework for processing gas from Cyprus’ offshore Aphrodite Field, operated by a consortium led by Chevron, in Egyptian facilities.
This deal comes only three days after the Cypriot government approved a revised development and production plan for the Aphrodite Field. The plan includes setting up a floating platform that processes extracted natural gas as well as a pipeline link to Egypt.
Cypriot Energy Minister George Papanastasiou said last month the options of whether to use Aphrodite gas for Egypt’s domestic energy needs or to process it for export are being weighed.
Egypt became a net gas exporter after Eni discovered the Zohr Field in 2015, but its gas production, especially from the Zohr Field, has been falling since 2021, reaching a six-year low last year due to technical issues and an accumulation of overdue payments to international partners.
There are high hopes that Egypt will return to the export market by the end of 2026 or early 2027, as Eni resumed drilling in the Zohr Field, the Middle East’s largest, in early January.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 20 February, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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