Eni Find Extends Egyptian Reserves
Italy’s Eni and the UK major BP have found a gas reservoir offshore Egypt with their Baltim Southwest 1X well. Eni described the discovery as "significant" June 9. They plan to fast-track the development, tying it into existing infrastructure.
The new discovery is 12 km off shore, and 10 km north of last year’s find, Nooros. The well was drilled in water depth of 25 m and reached a total depth of 3,750 m and found about 62 m of net gas pay in high quality Messinian sandstones and with "excellent reservoir properties," according to Eni.
The discovery, says Eni "further confirms the significant potential of the so called ‘Great Nooros Area’, which is now estimated to hold 70-80bn m³ of gas in place."
Claudio Descalzi, Eni CEO (Credit: Eni)
Eni, which operates the field through Petrobel, an equal joint venture with Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC), said that it started assessing the options for a fast track development of the new discovery as happened with Nooros field which was discovered in July 2015 and in May reached production of 65,000 barrels of oil equivalent/day. By the end of 2016 Nooros field is expected to reach production of 120,000 boe/d.
The new discovery is another success for Eni in Egypt, following the discovery last year of Zohr field, in the Shoruk block, which is estimated at 30 trillion ft3.
Eni expects production in Zohr field to start by the end of next year and ramp up production gradually. In March Eni said that it successfully performed production test for Zohr X2 well. In test configuration the well delivered 44mn ft³/day. Following data collection and analysis it is estimated that in production configuration it will deliver of up to 250mn ft³, Eni said.
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Ya'acov Zalel