Can Shale Survive In Egypt?

Forbes ^ | 12/29/2014 | Christopher Coats

[thackney]

Alongside Apache and Shell Egypt, Cairo will pursue the country’s first shale extraction project, complete with $30 to $40 million in investments in hopes of reviving the country’s ailing oil and gas sector as domestic demand continues to grow....

The move comes as Egypt continues to seek out solutions to a challenging energy environment, including waning interest from foreign energy firms and declining production.

According to press reports, Egyptian gas exports saw a 73.4 percent decline July of this year,...the decline also hit crude oil exports, reducing it to $350.7 million for the summer month from $398.8 million the year before.

Egypt’s export decline can be traced to a damaging combination of increasing domestic consumption during the hot summer months, which made up 65.2 percent of local natural gas, and lower production levels that have plagued the country since the collapse of the government of Hosni Mubarak in early 2011. Vital foreign participation has been difficult to ensure since 2011 due to political uncertainty and unease about the country’s sizable energy sector debt, amounting to billions owed to the very firms Cairo needs to revive lagging production numbers.

By tapping into the country’s shale potential, Cairo could expand the country’s production capacity while they work to bring traditional operations back online, easing domestic demand and possibly even moving back towards an export market.

[Red Badger]

Frack like an Egyptian...............

[hal ogen]

LOL

[central_va]

The British used to burn mummies in their locomotives that were in Egypt in the mid 19th century.No coal or trees so the burned mummies. No $hitter.

[thackney]

What you heard was a mangled version of a classic joke told by one of the masters of the art. But don’t feel bad—people have been falling for this one for more than 130 years.

The story isn’t that Egyptians use mummies to heat their food now, it’s that they used them in the 19th century to fuel their locomotives. We owe this wonderful conceit to Mark Twain, who in The Innocents Abroad (1869) writes, “The fuel [Egyptian railroaders] use for the locomotive is composed of mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose, and . . . sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out pettishly, ‘D—n these plebeians, they don’t burn worth a cent—pass out a King!’” Lest anyone fail to realize it’s a joke, Twain then adds, “Stated to me for a fact. I only tell it as I got it. I am willing to believe it. I can believe anything.”

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2341/do-egyptians-burn-mummies-as-fuel