Production from Zohr gas field to reach 1.8B cfd in September

CAIRO – 1 April 2018: Egypt plans to boost production from its giant offshore Zohr gas field to 700 million cubic feet a day (cfd) in May and to 1.8 billion cfd in September, an official source in the petroleum sector said Sunday.

He said that pre-operation tests have been initiated for the field’s first and second production lines and that mechanical and electrical installations for both lines are almost complete.

The second line will start operation in June, with a capacity of 350 million cfd, while the third and fourth lines will enter production in July and August respectively, bringing total production from the field to 1.4 billion cfd.

In 2015, Italian energy company Eni discovered Zohr gas field in the Shorouk concession, approximately 190 kilometers north of Port Said in an area of 100 square meters (39 square miles) and at a depth of 1,450 meters (4,760 feet).

The company in December delivered the first gas from Zohr field, whose estimated 30 trillion cubic feet (tfc) makes it the biggest gas field in the Mediterranean.

Petroleum Minister Tarek el-Molla said in previous statements that Egypt increased its gas production by some 1.6 cubic feet a day in the last year on the back of starting production from four main fields, including West Delta’s Taurus and Libra fields as well as Atoll and Zohr gas fields.

Egypt’s gas production currently stands at 5.5 billion cubic feet a day, after adding some 1.6 million cubic feet as a result of starting production from the aforementioned projects.

The country's total natural gas consumption is about six billion cubic feet per day, of which roughly 65 percent goes to the electricity sector.

The new discoveries are expected to turn Egypt into a net exporter of natural gas as the country is expected to halt gas imports by mid 2018.

Egypt plans to stop importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) by the end of the 2017/18 fiscal year ending in June as it accelerates production at a number of newly-discovered gas fields, Molla said in January.