Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli and Petroleum Minister Karim Badawi reviewed Egypt’s strategy to secure peak August energy supplies on Monday.
Badawi detailed operational readiness, contingency measures, and the steady arrival of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and fuel shipments to feed power plants during periods of peak summer demand. Coordinated with the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) and the ministries of finance and electricity, the measures target an anticipated eight per cent year-over-year surge in electricity consumption and aim to keep the national grid stable.
The meeting came a few days after a drone attack set one of Egypt’s four floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs), Energos Winter, docked in the Damietta port, on fire, along with the storage vessel and LNG carrier GasLog Salem. The attack stirred fears that the country, already grappling with a gap in its energy supply, would have to look for alternatives for the harmed facilities.
With a capacity of 450 million cubic feet per day (cfd), the halt in the FSRU operations means that almost 17 per cent of Egypt’s regasification capacity is out of action. Energos Winter, which started working in October 2025, is chartered for five years at $36 million annually or a total of $180 million. The extent of the damage has yet to be assessed, so no timeframe has been provided for when the FSRU might be operational again.
Before the incident, Badawi estimated the bill for securing LNG and importing fuel oil to cover the needs of power stations and industry during the four summer months at around $10 billion, including the cost of leasing the four regasification units.
Egypt’s current average natural gas production stands at about 3.8 billion cfd, compared to domestic demand estimated at around 6.2 billion cfd. This demand rises to roughly 7.2 billion cfd during the summer months, driven by increased consumption from power plants and making FSRUs a vital element in securing energy supplies during peak periods.
FSRUs are floating units that receive imported LNG cargoes, convert them back into gas, and feed them directly into the national grid, ensuring supply to power plants, industry, and other consumers.
In addition to Energos Winter, Egypt currently operates three regasification vessels in Ain Sokhna — Energos Power, Hoegh Eskimo, and Hoegh Galleon, each with a 750 million cfd capacity.
In a press conference on Thursday, the day following the fire, Madbouli stressed that Egypt’s energy system remained stable, with no disruption to natural gas supplies noted to any sector thanks to backup measures to ensure continuity, including by maintaining multiple regasification vessels and diversifying supply sources.
On the same day, Electricity Minister Mahmoud Esmat said that Egypt’s electricity demand had been at a peak level at 37 to 39 GW the previous two weeks, adding that the government has enough stocks of different fuel alternatives, including over 425,000 metric tons of fuel oil at power plants alone, as well as more in strategic storage, to meet this demand.
However, to mitigate the deficit resulting from the FSRU going offline, Egypt has coordinated with Jordan’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral resources to utilise a joint regasification vessel operating at the Aqaba port.
Under a bilateral agreement, the two countries can receive and transport regasified LNG when needed. The floating storage and regasification unit Energos Force berthed in Aqaba will thus regasify gas and send it to Egypt via the cross-border Arab Gas Pipeline (AGP).
An unidentified source told the Al-Borsa Daily that Egypt has already redirected one of four LNG cargoes scheduled to arrive at Damietta in August to Jordan’s Aqaba terminal.
Israel has also increased its natural gas exports to Egypt by approximately 50 million cfd to reach 1.25 billion cfd starting on Thursday to compensate for supply shortages, according to a government official who spoke to Asharq Business.
The official added that pumping rates from the Leviathan and Tamar Fields in the Eastern Mediterranean have reached the maximum pipeline capacity transporting gas to Egypt.
The fire at the FRSU serves as a reminder for many of how closely linked the region’s energy routes are. Both the Suez Canal and the Sumed pipeline that feed into the Mediterranean are not far from the site of the fire. Peter Stevenson, a journalist specialising in the gas and oil sector, wrote in the UK-based Middle East Economic Survey (MEES) on Friday that the drone attack on the FRSU marked a significant expansion of the Middle East conflict.
“It is unlikely to be a coincidence that the attack came days after Saudi Arabia was forced by Houthi attacks to divert oil exports through the Suez Canal and the Sumed pipeline system,” Stevenson said, explaining that the canal enters the Mediterranean at Port Said just 60 km from Damietta, while the Sumed’s Mediterranean terminal at Sidi Kerir is 200 km from the attack site.
But he stressed that the strike on Damietta is unlikely to dent Egypt’s LNG import capacity, given the three other regasification units at Ain Sokhna on the Red Sea, which together provide about 2.25 billion cfd of throughput. Roughly four‑fifths of Egypt’s LNG cargoes are handled at Ain Sokhna, according to data by Kpler, a Paris‑based energy and commodities analytics company.
Egypt has been moving on parallel routes to secure its energy supplies for the last two years. The plans include attracting more investments in local production and exploration. The Ministry of Petroleum has an extensive drilling plan for the 2026-2027 calendar year, targeting 160 new oil and gas wells to lift domestic output, build reserves, and cut the reliance on imports.
About 70 per cent of these wells will be to leverage existing assets, while the remaining 30 per cent will cover new prospects of promising acreage. The ministry expects the efforts to deliver an annual rise of roughly 15 per cent in oil production and 12 per cent in gas.
Drilling will concentrate in the Nile Delta, the Western Desert, the Gulf of Suez and selected deepwater blocks in the Mediterranean.
Egypt is also coordinating with Cyprus to import gas and to use part of it to cover local demand and reexport the rest to Europe.
The fire incident came only a few days after the Italian company Eni had taken a final investment decision on the Cronos Field off Cyprus, targeting first production in 2028 with gas routed, processed, and liquefied through Egypt.
Under agreements signed last year, gas will flow through infrastructure linked to Egypt’s Zohr Field, then be processed at the Damietta liquefaction plant, and then be re-exported to Europe.
In parallel, the operators of the Cypriot Aphrodite Field have recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Egypt giving it the right to buy all recoverable gas from the 3.7 trillion cubic feet field.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 6 August, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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