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CAIRO (Reuters) – Saudi Arabian state oil company Aramco will resume oil product shipments to Egypt some six months after suddenly halting them, the Egyptian Petroleum Ministry said on Wednesday.
The ministry said in a statement it was working out a timetable with Aramco for the resumption of shipments and that commercial reasons related to global oil prices and reduced production were behind the suspension in October.
“It was agreed that the Saudi Arabian side would resume Aramco’s shipping of oil products as per the commercial contract signed between the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation and Aramco,” the statement said.
An official at Egypt’s Petroleum Ministry said the shipments would resume very shortly.
“Very shortly we will finalise the time and place for receiving shipments from Aramco,” the official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorised to speak to the media, told Reuters.
Asked if shipments would resume within weeks, the official said: “No, no, we are talking about a very short time period.”
Saudi Arabia agreed in April last year to provide Egypt with 700,000 tonnes of refined oil products per month for five years but the cargoes stopped arriving in early October as festering political tensions burst into the open.
