Deadly

I would have been more impressed with your friend if he had cited sources for his claims. Simply because he live there does not make him an expert on the Egyptian economy any more than living in Australia makes you an expert on the Aussie economy.

Let me deal with the question of oil first. In researching my piece one of my sources was the US Dept. of Energy. Here is a quote from their Country Analysis for Egypt as at February 2011.

>>Hydrocarbons play a sizeable role in Egypt’s economy both from oil and natural gas production and also in terms of revenues from the Suez Canal, an important transit point for oil shipments out of the Persian Gulf. Total oil production, however, has declined since the country’s 1996 peak of close to 935,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) to current levels of about 660,000 bbl/d. Egypt’s consumption is slightly higher than production and THE COUNTRY HAS BEGUN TO RELY ON A SMALL VOLUME OF IMPORTS TO MEET DOMESTIC DEMAND. Egypt also has the largest oil refining sector in Africa and since refining capacity now exceeds domestic demand, some non-Egyptian crudes are currently imported for processing and re-export.>>

(Captalisation added)

In other words Egypt is now a net importer of oil as I stated in the article.

Note that decline in production of around a third in the past decade and a half.

As I also stated Egypt is a net exporter of LNG.

It’s getting late and so I’ll respond in more detail when I have time. But your friend is not off to a very impressive start, is he?

And here is a link:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/Egypt/pdf.pdf

If the US Dept of Energy is wrong perhaps your friend would like to point me to a better source?