Saudi halted oil supplies to Egypt in October: Minister

By Aydogan Kalabalik

CAIRO (AA) - Saudi Arabia's national oil company Aramco has disregarded an agreement with Egypt signed back in April for the supply of oil and petroleum products to Egypt, Egypt Oil Minister Tarek al-Molla said Monday.

At a press briefing held on the sidelines of an energy conference in Abu Dhabi, al-Molla said that "since October, Aramco has not supplied any oil to Egypt".

During a visit by King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud to Egypt in April, Saudi Arabia and Egypt signed a $23-billion agreement calling for the supply of 700,000 tons of petroleum products from Saudi Arabia to Egypt for five years.

Last month, however, Saudi Aramco announced it would resume the supply of refined oil to Egypt one day after suspending it, prompting the Egyptian government to begin studying alternative energy sources.

In this regard, Egypt has signed a memorandum of understanding with Iraq to establish an energy investment company specialized in upstream and downstream oil production.

The MoU calls for the import of crude oil from Iraq’s city of Basra, which would later be refined in Egypt.

Saudi Aramco has yet to announce the reasons for its decision to suspend oil shipments to Egypt.