Egypt’s Suez Canal Economic Zone on Tuesday signed a $2.6 billion contract to build a methanol plant at Egypt’s Ain Sokhna port and industrial complex, it said in a statement.
The project will be executed in two phases, with the completion of the first by 2025 at an investment cost of about $1.6 billion.
The second phase, with an estimated cost of about $1 billion, is to be completed over a further three years.
The targeted production capacity for the first phase is one million tons of methanol and 400,000 tons of ammonia per year.
This comes in line with Egypt’s plan to increase exports of petrochemical products, the head of the economic zone, Yahya Zaki, said. It will provide about 1,200 direct and indirect job opportunities as part of the economic zone's vision of creating one million job opportunities by 2030, he added.
Meanwhile, Egypt's Suez Canal will reduce rebates on canal tolls for liquefied natural gas carriers from Jan. 1 till June 30, the canal authority said in a circular published on its website on Tuesday.
The rebates to LNG tankers operating between the American Gulf and several ports in Asia range between 30 to 70 percent.
