Italy’s Eni targets to increase its investment in the Mediterranean deep water gas field Zohr to $16bn instead of $12bn over the project’s lifetime.
A source in the petroleum sector told Daily News Egypt that Egypt’s foreign partner in the Zohr gas field has spent about $11bn on developing the project until the end of September. He noted that Zohr’s production increased to 2.1bn cubic feet per day, instead of 1.7bn cubic feet per day, at the end of last fiscal year.
He added that the company works on accelerating the pace of developing the gas field, with the aim to link the project’s full production estimated at 2.7bn cubic feet per day, to the national gas network by next July, instead of the end of 2019.
The source revealed that Zohr’s total production will increase to about 2.95bn cubic feet per day, instead of the 2.7bn cubic feet per day, previously estimated in the field’s development plan.
He pointed out that about 80% of the project has been completed, adding that a large number of Egyptian companies have participated in the development of the field, which showed their high efficiency and capability to operate using advanced technologies in such a significant project.
The source said that the Ministry of Petroleum currently is currently working on speeding up the linkage of the field’s production to the national network, upon President Abdul Fatah al-Sisi’s instruction.
He added that the ministry succeeded in cooperating with the foreign partner to increase Zohr’s production to 2bn cubic feet per day this month.
It is to be noted that initial production of Zohr reached 350m cubic feet per day in mid-December 2017, and then it increased to 1bn cubic feet per day in the beginning of this year.
The discovery of Zohr was achieved only about one and a half years after the signing of the agreement between Egypt and Eni, and the first production took only 28 months since the discovery date, instead of the typical 6-8 years.
The project includes developing and drilling 20 wells in deep water at a depth of 1,500 metres, with a total investment of about $12bn.
