Backgrounder: Egypt's new prime minister Ismael

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Saturday has tasked the outgoing Petroleum Minister Sherif Ismael with forming a new Cabinet to succeed Ibrahim Mahlab whose resignation was accepted earlier in the day.

The former oil minister said in a press statement he will try to finish the formation of the new cabinet within one week upon the instructions of president al-Sisi.

Ismael, Egypt's third premier after the removal of the Muslim Brotherhood's President Mohamed Morsi in 2013 in response to mass protests against his rule, was a mechanical engineer.

Born in July 1955, Ismael was graduated from the faculty of engineering at Ain Shams University in 1978, and started his career at the multinational oil company Mobil.

He served as the deputy minister of petroleum in charge of oil and gas operations, at the Egyptian company engineering for the Petroleum and Process Industries (Enppi), from 2000 to 2005.

Ismael was the managing director of Ganoub El Wadi Petroleum Holding Company from 2007 until his appointment as oil minister following Morsi's overthrow in July 2013.

He served as petroleum minister since July 2013, first under Prime Minister Hazem El-Beblawi, and then under Ibrahim Mahlab, who was appointed prime minister in 2014.

During his tenure as an oil minister, Ismael managed in tackling several sensitive files: energy subsidies, gas shortage and oil explorations.

Also, the budgets' financial allocations for the energy field were declined during his service.

By slashing the energy subsidies and setting a plan to end the fuel subsidies within a few years, Ismael exerted a lot of efforts to assure that the poor wouldn't face troubles and that the subsidies wouldn't be wasted on rich factory owners.

He also finished the state project "Smart Card" for distributing the fuel and face smuggling the oil products in the black market, which was the main reason for repetition of the fuel crisis and the long standing queues of citizens before gas stations that has hit the country during the former president Morsi.

He also paid back some arrears to foreign energy companies to improve Egypt's image among investors, reducing the country's debts for the foreign companies from 6 billion to 2.9 billion U.S. dollars now.

The oil ministry under him has signed 56 agreements for oil and gas exploration, with minimum investment 13 billion dollars.

Those agreements have resulted in the country's biggest discovery of natural gas Zohr field off shore Egypt with an estimated 30 trillion cubic feet of gas.

For Egypt, the Zohr field in the Mediterranean offers hopes in the country's battle against chronic, politically sensitive energy shortages.

The most current difficulties facing the new appointed premier is choosing new line-up of highly-performed ministers with good reputation and clear visions, after some officials in his predecessor cabinet have been charged in corruption cases.

President al-Sisi, who seeks achieving giant national project, luring foreign investment and calming the citizens' sufferings of poor services and high prices, put additional pressures on the new prime minister in picking up the right ministers.

He will also take office while Egypt is due to hold long-delayed parliamentary elections next month, the final step of the country three-stage future roadmap.

The citizens awaited a new government, innovative in solving the problems, decisive in eliminating corruption, with young and open-minded officials who can present high-quality service and control the prices.

The ordinary people doesn't care so much about national project, but they need to touch reforms which affected their daily life.

They look upon ending their daily misery of accumulated garbage in the streets, finding jobs, improvement of health care and transportation among many other problems. Enditem