Eni announces official production from Zohr

CAIRO - 20 December 2017 – Eni announced on Thursday that it produced its first gas from the giant Zohr field in less than two and a half years after discovery.

The Italian company said in a statement that they worked equally on exploration, appraisal and development phases, "this combination allowed Eni to generate $9 billion from exploration activities between 2014 and 2017," Eni said.

"The start-up of Zohr is the direct result of our unique know-how, our ability to innovate in technology and of our tenacity in pursuing even the most challenging goals, of which we are very proud," Eni’s CEO, Claudio Descalzi said in the statement.

Egypt has officially started operations of the Mediterranean’s largest gas field Zohr on Saturday, at a capacity of 350 million cubic feet a day, Petroleum Minister Tarek el-Molla said, adding that the first phase of the project will be finalized in June 2018, when production will hit more than one billion cubic feet a day.

Discovered in 2015 by Italian energy company Eni, Zohr gas field covers an area of 100 square meters with a depth of 1,450 meters. Investing around $10 billion in the project, Eni estimates a total output of approximately 30 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Eni has been present in Egypt since 1954, where it operates through its subsidiary IEOC Production BV. The company is the country’s main producer with an equity production of approximately 230,000 barrels of oil per day.