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REUTERS - Egypt debt to foreign oil companies at $3.5 billion - official
Workers stand near pipes while setting up an oil rig near the coast on the outskirts of Havana May 24, 2010. Cuba estimates it has 20 billion barrels of oil in its part of the Gulf of Mexico, which abuts the oil-rich U.S. and Mexican zones of the gulf, and Havana views its possible production as a godsend. The communist-led island produces about half its energy needs from onshore wells and gets the rest from oil-rich socialist ally Venezuela at favorable prices. REUTERS/Desmond Boylan
CAIRO, July 5 (Reuters) - Egypt's debts to foreign oil companies stood at $3.5 billion dollars at the end of June, a 6.1 percent increase from March, an official at state-owned Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) said on Sunday.
The country's payments to oil and gas companies have been delayed by economic instability since a popular uprising ousted leader Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
"Foreign oil company dues with Egypt have reached $3.5 billion dollars," an EGPC official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Egypt's oil ministry said in March that it aimed to fully repay its debts to energy companies by mid-2016, about a year later than previously indicated. In April a ministry spokesman said Egypt had paid foreign energy firms $9.369 billion in arrears in the nine months to March 31.
Arrears began to accumulate before the 2011 uprising but they swelled to billions of dollars amid worsening state finances while the government used gas earmarked for export to meet domestic demand.
(Reporting by Abdel Rahman Adel; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and David Goodman)
