Egypt’s 2025 LNG imports hit record high as energy appetite grows

Egypt imported a record volume of LNG in 2025, highlighting its growing energy needs as it faced a domestic gas production decline and less reliable supply from Israel amid its ongoing tensions with Hamas.

The country imported a total of 9.01 million metric tons of LNG last year, equivalent to 129 cargoes, data from Platts, part of S&P Global Energy, showed, with 90.9% of this from the US.

Throughout the year, Egypt relied on the US, Equatorial Guinea, Norway, Trinidad, Spain, Mexico and Mauritania-Senegal.

The last six months of the year saw the most imports at 3.36 million mt, or 49 cargoes, in the third quarter, and 3.28 million mt, or 46 clips, in Q4.

Due to a lack of investment upstream, Egypt has seen a multiyear-long decline of domestic gas production, particularly at the Zohr gas field, which accounts for about one-third of the country's output.

This shortage has not been aided by conflict between Israel and Hamas, which led to Israel intermittently cutting of pipeline gas to the region.

Previously a regional gas exporter, Egypt has established itself as a long-term LNG importer, with Egyptian and Turkish demand propping up the East Mediterranean LNG price, which is at a premium to both Northwest Europe and the West Mediterranean.

On Jan. 13, Platts assessed the LNG East Mediterranean Marker at $10.373/MMBtu, a 25-cent/MMBtu premium to Northwest Europe.

Mixed picture

Despite Egypt's burgeoning imports through 2025, the start of 2026 has offered a mixed picture so far.

"January is the first month where the LNG imports are coming in lower than we expected," one Atlantic-based market participant said. "I imagine it's on their production coming in higher, as I don't think their power demand has stepped down recently."

However, another Atlantic-based market source said the country had taken in "two or three cargoes more than expected," and that this was "coming from demand [and] seemingly stemming from industry," as the upstream issues had been resolved due to the production decline having stopped.

"But the cause [of the demand] is a mystery," they added.

One reason for the heightened demand could be exposure to tensions between Venezuela and the US, another player said.

S&P Global Energy CERA has forecast demand in Egypt at 3.82 million mt in Q3 2026, up 13.4%, and 1.5 million mt in Q4, down 54.3%. For the whole of 2026, Egypt will import a total of 11.14 million mt, a 26.3% increase from the previous year.

The expected demand drop in Q4 may be due to QatarEnergy and the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Co. coming to an agreement for the supply of up to 24 LNG cargoes for the summer of 2026.

Egypt's petroleum ministry said on Facebook Jan. 4, several LNG shipments from Qatar would be delivered to Egypt's ports of Ain Sokhna and Damietta over the summer period.

However, in a development that will thin import capacity for Egypt, despite demand in the region remaining robust, the floating storage and regasification unit Energos Eskimo departed from Ain Sokhna on Jan. 13 after completing its bunkering operations, despite only beginning service in the summer of 2025.

Looking ahead, an LNG trader said: "For 2026, they [Egypt] will likely need 160 cargoes, so much more than the 120/130 from last year. But there could be some downside when Israel increases the gas supply to Egypt in the second half of the year."

"I heard they are getting another FSRU too, which is currently in Singapore, the Hoegh Evi," they added.

Another trader said: "160 would be the ceiling. They likely do not need that much and then they have this auction in March for 100 cargoes, so it is difficult to see how much LNG they actually need over this year and next year."

However, the second Atlantic-based source said imports could be higher than 160 cargoes "given recent trends."