Egypt will move three super-sized distillation towers to the Western Desert gas complex to boost its daily gas production capacity, by adding a fourth production line with a capacity of 600 million cubic feet per day, the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone) said in a statement on Wednesday.

The move will boost the daily production capacity at the complex to 1.5 billion cubic feet.

The distillation towers will be moved by sea from El-Adabiya Port in the upper part of the Gulf of Suez on the Red Sea to El-Dekheila Port in the Mediterranean and then to the Western Desert, the statement said.

The three distillation towers belong to the state-owned Egyptian Natural Gas Company and were manufactured in Egypt by Petrojet, the state-owned construction arm of the country’s petroleum sector.

The towers include a 60.9 metre-long, 480-ton tower; a 51.3 metre-long, 340-ton tower, and a smaller tower of a total length of 17.35 metres and weight of 210 tons, the statement added.

The equipment was moved to El-Adabiya port given its ability to handle large-sized equipment and its specialisation in the transport of equipment related to petroleum industries, the statement explained.

Egypt, which is self-sufficient in natural gas thanks to major gas discoveries over the past few years, is also a major gas exporter and has been working to increase its gas exports to obtain foreign currency.

This comes in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war, which has put pressure on the local currency.

Egypt's gas export revenues have increased eight-fold since 2014, as the country aims to become a major gas supplier to the European continent, especially since the outbreak of the war.

Egypt’s petroleum exports hit a record high in 2022 at $18.2 billion, Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Tarek El-Molla said in January.

Egypt’s exports of natural gas also hiked by 171 percent in 2022 to $8.4 billion, up from $3.5 billion in 2021, according to data by the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources in late December.

Last year, Egypt exported eight million tons of natural gas, up from seven million tons the year before, the ministry added.

In December, Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi gave his directives to intensify exploration of new oil and natural gas areas to optimise the use of resources and maximise the added reserves of natural gas to meet the needs of the local market and exports.

Egypt seeks to raise its monthly revenues from natural gas to $1 billion in 2023, instead of $600 million, Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait said during the Euromoney Egypt Conference 2022 held in December.