Bid to boost ties with Eni  

Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Tarek el-Mulla held talks on Monday with Claudio Descalzi, President and CEO of the Italian company Eni.

The meeting came on the sidelines of the minister’s participation in the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition & Conference 2021 (ADIPEC), which opened yesterday.

The minister spoke about oil projects undertaken in Egypt since 2014 and future plans.

He stressed the importance of sustaining strategic partnerships between the petroleum sector and Eni, which resulted in many successes in recent years.

El-Mulla referred to joint efforts to speed up the restart of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Damietta, which is an important step to transform Egypt into a regional hub for energy.

The minister went on to say the Egyptian government has devised strategies for the switch to clean energies and reduce emissions.

Egypt is fully committed to all international agreements and initiatives that seek to preserve the environment and mitigate the impact of climate change on human life, el-Mulla said.

El-Mulla pointed out the importance of co-operation with Eni to prepare joint initiatives for carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technologies and reducing methane emissions.

The joint initiatives will be announced at the next Conference of the Parties to Climate Change COP 27, which Egypt will host next year in Sharm el-Sheikh.

For his part, Descalzi affirmed Eni’s keenness to expedite the implementation of new oil projects to increase production in Egypt, especially in light of the fruitful co-operation between the two sides and the achievement of several new gas and oil discoveries during the past period.

He pointed out the company’s full readiness to provide the necessary support for Egypt in preparing technical and economic studies for a project to transport and store carbon dioxide produced from industrial activities for wells.

It is similar to the HyNet project implemented by Eni in Britain, considered to be the first of its kind in the United Kingdom to establish an infrastructure for carbon capture and storage.