BAGHDAD: Egypt will receive two million barrels of crude oil on Tuesday from Iraq, the first shipment to arrive as part of a deal with the Iraq’s state oil marketing company SOMO, Al-Ahram’s Arabic website quoted Egypt’s Oil Minister Tarek El-Molla as saying.
Under the terms of the year-long agreement, which was reached last month by Baghdad and Cairo, Iraq will sell 12 million barrels of oil to Egypt.
Cairo has been struggling to procure oil and natural gas for domestic market needs from several sources in the past few years.
However, recent surges in natural gas discoveries and projected finds in the country promise to help Egypt cut down on its liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports in the coming year.
Egypt, the eighth largest importer of LNG in the world, has been holding talks with its LNG suppliers to defer contracted shipments this year to cut back on purchases in 2018 and achieve self-sufficiency in the alternative fuel source by the end of that year.
