Israel’s natural gas flows to Egypt are expected to almost double and reach pre-war levels early next week, according to a person familiar with Egyptian imports, after a major offshore field resumed output on easing safety concerns.
Imports are expected to rise to 650 million cubic feet a day on Thursday, and to the normal level of 800 million early next week, from about 250 million earlier in November, the person said, asking not to be named because the information isn’t public.
Egypt uses some Israeli gas to meet its domestic needs and exports the excess along with its own liquefied natural gas, primarily to Europe. The government is still assessing if the restoration of supplies from Israel will result in the North African nation resuming those onward shipments this winter because local consumption remains high, the person said.
Eni SpA, which holds stakes in the giant Zohr gas field in Egypt and in one of the country’s two LNG plants, expects exports from the country to resume “by December, possibly January,” Cristian Signoretto, the company’s deputy chief operating officer of natural resources, said at a conference in London Tuesday.
Chevron Corp. said Monday it has resumed gas supplies from the Tamar field, which Israel had ordered shut because of security risks following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on the country. That left the market on edge about whether the conflict would disrupt regional energy flows with winter approaching in Europe.
In Egypt, the move led to more of the electricity shortages that have plagued the cash-strapped country since the summer.
Egypt’s LNG exports could be 40% lower over this winter than forecast a month earlier, according to BloombergNEF projections. The country shipped 80% of its LNG to Europe last year as the continent sought to replace Russian pipeline gas after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
The East Mediterranean Gas pipeline that runs from Israel’s Ashkelon, just north of the Gaza Strip, to Egypt’s Arish has also resumed today, two people familiar with the operations said on Tuesday. Shipments were being redirected via a longer route through Jordan while the more direct EMG link was closed last month.
--With assistance from Anna Shiryaevskaya and Laura Hurst.
(Updates with EMG restart in last paragraph.)
