Egypt's Zohr natural gas field, the largest in the Mediterranean, began production on Saturday (December 16th) with an initial 350 million cubic feet a day, AFP reported.
The field operated by the Italian ENI company is estimated to hold 30 trillion cubic feet of gas.
"With the completion of the initial phase for this project planned for June 2018, production will gradually reach more than a billion cubic feet a day," oil minister Tarek al-Molla said in a statement.
Production would eventually increase to 2.7 billion cubic feet a day, he said.
ENI had discovered the field in 2015 in a windfall for the North African country which has had to import fuel to feed its growing demands.
