CAIRO - 20 November 2024: Prime Minister, Mostafa Madbouly, announced in a press conference that the main challenge for the Zohr gas field was the delayed payment of dues to the Italian company, which led to a halt in further investments.
He highlighted the government's commitment to settling monthly dues, which facilitated a visit from the company’s CEO and a meeting with President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, resulting in an agreement to resume operations of the main drilling rig to enhance the field’s production.
Madbouly further stated that the rig is expected to return to operation by the end of this year, with production levels anticipated to recover to pre-crisis levels by mid-2025.
This development is poised to significantly reduce Egypt’s import bill and boost natural gas exports.
Zohr is a joint venture involving Eni, BP, Russia's Rosneft, UAE’s Mubadala Energy, and the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS).
The Mediterranean-based field is operated by Petrobel, a joint venture between Italy's Eni and the state-owned Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC).
Earlier, Egypt’s Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Kareem Badawi, stated that new drilling operations will take place at the Zohr gas field in the Mediterranean under Eni’s direction in the near future.
In July, the Egyptian Cabinet estimated total investments in the field to have reached $12 billion to date, with projections of $15 billion over the next three years. Drilling operations for the field’s 20th well, with investments of $70 million, are currently underway. Upon its completion, Zohr’s production is expected to reach 2.3 billion cubic feet per day.
Discovered by Eni in 2015, the Zohr field began production in late 2017 and contains an estimated 30 trillion cubic feet of gas.
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