Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS.A) said it will resume deepwater exploration for oil and gas off Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, executive vice president Sami Iskander told a news conference on April 17.

Egypt is looking to production from recently discovered fields to halt energy imports by 2019.

A petroleum ministry official said in March that new production at Shell’s West Nile Delta field 9B is expected to reach 350 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) to 400 MMcf/d by 2019.

Separately, production from the first three wells in the field is set to begin in the 2018 to 2019 fiscal year.

The field is owned by Egypt’s General Petroleum Corp., Malaysia’s Petronas and Shell.