Egypt Awards Four Offshore Oil, Gas Licences

Egypt has awarded four new licenses to explore for oil and gas off its Mediterranean coast, news agency Reuters reported citing a statement by EGAS.  

BP and Edison have been awarded one licence each while a consortium of BP and Eni’s Egyptian subsidiary had also picked up a block as had another consortium involving Eni, BP and France’s Total, the news agency reported.

EGAS head Khaled Abdel Badie told Reuters after the announcement that Egypt was preparing to launch a new bidding round for offshore gas exploration in the Mediterranean in the first half of 2016.

In August Eni made a “world class supergiant gas discovery” at its Zohr prospect, in the deep waters of Egypt. The discovery could hold a potential of 30 trillion cubic feet of lean gas in place (5.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent in place) covering an area of about 100 square kilometres. Zohr is the largest gas discovery ever made in Egypt and in the Mediterranean Sea and could become one of the world’s largest natural-gas finds.