Chairman of the Egyptian Gas Association (EGA), and Executive Chairman of the International Gas Union (IGU), Engineer Khaled Abu Bakr, said that Beijing invited Egypt to participate in the G20 summit to be held in China. He stressed the importance of starting an international dialogue on the energy issues and coordinating the governance and energy policies elaborations.
In a statement, Abu Bakr said that he had held a ministerial meeting to prepare Egypt’s final energy statement to be announced at the G20 summit, which will be held in Beijing in September 2016.
The events of the meeting will include G20 Gas Day, which will discuss the gas policies internationally and its role as a factor in the environmental policies. In addition, the debate will look at the significance of gas as a sustainable energy in the economic, industrial, and social growth.
Abu Bakr stated that Egypt was keen on accepting the invitation and participating in these important international events in order to contribute to the recommendations making processes and defining regulatory frameworks. These steps are to insure Egypt’s sustainable energy supply for the future needs, which directly impacts the country’s economy and its resource development as well as the industry. As a result, a balanced energy supply speeds up growth rates in general. Energy is one of the most important economic investments upon which the world countries depend.
Recommendations by the climate change conference also obliged the states to work on decreasing harmful emissions.
He further affirmed that Egypt has a special position in the IGU due to its success story in applying the latest technologies and gas usage, after having discovered Zohr field in the deep waters, which is the largest discovery in the world in the last 10 years. Abu Bakr presents Egypt’s pioneering experience, which is considered to be the most prominent in Africa, in terms of the aggregation of gas to houses, cars, and industrial citadels, and the gas role in feeding the national economy.
The G20 is a forum established in 1999 due to the financial crises in the 1990s. The forum represents two-thirds of the trade in the world, and over 90% of the global crude production. Since 15th November, 2008, not only the ministers of finance, but also the presidents of the states and governments have been meeting in the framework of G20.