12 countries ask bid importing natural Gas

"Twelve countries asked for importing quantities of Egyptian natural gas, reaching 60 billion cubic feet annually," said Minister of Petroleum Sameh Fahmi.

Proven reserve of Egypt's natural gas climbed to 55.500 trillion cubic feet, sufficient to meet the country's needs for 100 years to come, said Fahmi, referring to current technological operations to assess the volume of new gas finds in the Mediterranean.

"One-third of the reserve and future gas finds will be kept for the next generations, the second one-third will be exported and the rest will be earmarked for local consumption," said Fahmi in press statements Saturday following a series of meetings with executive officials in the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) and the Holding Company for Natural gas.

"The meeting was devoted to discuss the export plan in the upcoming stage and providing the needs for the national plan to establish the petrochemicals industry whose investments hit $ 10 billion and to be carried out in 20 years' time," he said.

Fahmi noted that the Petroleum sector has provided 35,000 jobs in the past 20 months and more than 6,000 trainees have finished their training programmes at 28 specialised centers.