Zohr gas treatment plant starts operation

CAIRO - 10 December 2017: "Two gas flares at Zohr gas treatment plant have started operation," Minister of Petroleum Tarek el-Molla announced Sunday.

"The plant pumped experimental quantities of gas to the national grid, in preparation to start processing Zohr gas at this plant in the next few days," Molla added in a statement from the ministry.

Pilot production from Zohr gas field has kicked off Saturday, with a production capacity of 350 million cubic feet a day.

The Mediterranean’s largest gas field Zohr was discovered in 2015 by Italian energy company Eni and is expected to save Egypt some $1 billion annually in gas imports.

The field has an area of 100 square meters at a depth of 1,450 meters. Investing around $10 billion in the project, Eni is estimating total output of the field to be approximately 30 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Eni is the main operator of the project with a share of 60 percent, while the other two operators, Russian Rosneft and British Petroleum (BP), have stakes of 30 percent and 10 percent respectively.