What is bitumen price in Egypt and how other items affect that? In the following, we will become familiar with the Egyptian market and its relation to the global oil market.
With 4.4 billion barrels of crude oil reserves and an average daily production of about 650,000 barrels of crude oil,
Egypt is the sixth-largest oil producer in Africa and the largest producer of non-OPEC crude oil on the continent.
It also holds the title of Africa’s largest refinery with a nominal refining capacity of about 720,000 barrels. In addition, in the oil world,
Egypt is the largest transporter of the Persian Gulf crude oil to Europe
and the United States due to the Suez Canal and the 200-mile Sumed pipeline. It is worth noting that half of the country’s oil reserves are offshore.
Moreover, more than 50 percent of the country’s crude oil production is currently from the Gulf of Suez. The Eastern Sahara,
Western Sahara and the Sinai Peninsula are the main points of Egyptian oil production. According to published data, there are 4.5 million barrels of shale oil reserves in the Safaga Quseir region in the
Eastern Sahara and 1.2 million barrels in the Abu Turtur region in Western Sahara.
It’s important to know that Egypt was once one of the world’s major oil suppliers,
but in recent years its production has plummeted to the point where it has become an importer,
after years of being known as an exporter of crude oil.
To be more specific, the Egyptian National Oil Company (EGPC) is in charge of managing the
oil industry in this Arab country. British companies BP, Italian Eni and Anglo-Dutch Shell are the most important companies in the Egyptian oil industry.
with only one of its 10 refineries owned by the private sector. This causes the refining industry to attract less capital than the upstream oil industry.
For instance, in 2015, the investment in the Egyptian refining industry amounted to $ 40 million,
while the investment in the upstream sector amounted to $ 230 million. Meanwhile, in 2016, it allocated $ 6.2 billion and in the
first nine months of 2017, $ 7 billion in imports of refined products,
bringing the share of petroleum products to 38% of Egypt’s total imports.
Importantly, Saudi Arabia will export 700,000 tons of refined products a month by 2021 under a five-year long-term contract. Kuwait has similar contracts for the export of crude oil and petroleum products to Egypt. Under the agreement,
Kuwait will export 1.5 million tons of petroleum products annually and 2 million barrels of crude oil per month to Egypt by 2019. Meanwhile, according to the agreement between the two countries,bitumen price in Egypt
Kuwait Energy Company, one of the largest companies in the Kuwaiti oil industry, has started production at the
Al-Jahraa oil field in the Western Sahara region.