Egypt Oil Products Import Bill Soars As Aged Refineries Shunned

4 Oct 2024 Issue: 67 / 40 By: James Cockayne

Despite hiking throughput capacity with the expansion of Alexandria’s Midor plant, Egypt’s refinery runs have fallen in line with crude output. Rising demand, particularly for fuel oil, has instead been met by imports with Egypt’s oil & gas trade deficit at record levels.

Freshly-released Egyptian trade data shows that the country recorded a record petroleum trade deficit of $7.65bn for the 2023-24 financial year (y/e 30 June). The data show a massive $8bn-plus swing from a $410mn surplus for 2022-23. This in turn accounted for almost all of the $8.4bn leap in Egypt’s overall trade deficit to a near-record $39.6bn for 2023-24.

And the situation has got worse, not better, in recent months. Q2 2024 saw a record quarterly petroleum trade deficit of $2.57bn. And the Q3 figure is set to come in higher still as Cairo was forced to spend big on imports of both LNG and liquid fuels in a bid to keep the lights on (MEES, 23 August). The latest official oil trade stats from Jodi show record fuel oil imports of 150,000 b/d for July amid five-year high overall oil imports of 347,000 b/d, whilst Kpler data indicate that net fuel oil imports rose again to new record highs of 198,000 b/d for August and 237,000 b/d for September. (CONTINUED - 1384 WORDS)