Belgium’s DEME Group will work with Egypt on exploring green hydrogen under an MoU with the oil and electricity ministries and the Egyptian navy, cabinet said in a statement on Thursday. The MoU will be followed by studies to look into producing the gas on a trial basis “as a step toward expanding in this field … [and possibly] exporting,” the statement says. The agreement came following a meeting last month between President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and three CEOs of a Belgium alliance of infrastructure players including DEME, Fluxys, and the company running the Port of Antwerp. Egypt is currently probing green hydrogen, which is produced without burning fossils, as a cleaner energy source to integrate into its energy mix by 2035. Siemens was brought on board earlier this year for a pilot project.

OTHER ENERGY NEWS- Public spending on fuel subsidies is continuing to drop, falling 45% in the first half of FY2020-2021 to EGP 8.4 bn from EGP 15.2 bn in the same period last fiscal year, Oil Minister Tarek El Molla told Reuters on Thursday. This puts the government on track to comfortably beat the EGP 28.2 bn spending target this fiscal year. Spending on fuel subsidies fell 77% in FY2019-2020, helped in no small part by the collapse in oil prices due to the pandemic.