Saipem drillship has arrived in Egypt to work on Eni’s giant gas field and is preparing to resume drilling operations at a field offshore Egypt.
Egypt’s Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources confirmed that the Saipem 10,000 drillship entered Egyptian seas on Wednesday with the intention of drilling two deepwater wells in the Zohr field, which is located in the Shorouk region, 200 kilometers north of Port Said.
The Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Karim Badawi, declared that Zohr development activities will resume and that two development wells would begin drilling in January with the goal of producing 220 million cubic feet of gas per day.
This follows Eni plans disclosed to begin the second stage of production in Baleine’s oil and gas field in Ivory Coast, with the second phase of the oil and gas production scheduled to begin by the end of 2024.
During a meeting with Francesco Gaspari, President of Eni’s subsidiary in Egypt, in January 2025, Badawi reaffirmed the political leadership’s full support for international oil companies operating in the country.
He emphasized that the petroleum sector is actively addressing challenges to facilitate their work.
Badawi also mentioned that the top priority is to increase oil and gas production and reserves to meet local demand while simultaneously reducing the import bill.
What you should know
Zohr gas field is the largest gas discovery in the Mediterranean.
The field’s production peaked in 2019 and has since been steadily increasing, reaching 1.9 billion cubic feet per day in the first part of 2024. Eni intends to drill new wells in order to boost output.
The Zohr field came on stream in 2017 after being discovered in 2015.
Eni aimed to attain the 3.2 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) objective by the end of 2019; however, the field’s production only reached 2 bcfd in 2018 and 2.7 bcfd in 2019.
