Egypt increases gas output from two new offshore wells

Egypt's petroleum ministry said on Friday that two new wells in the deepwater West Delta have gone online, adding about 60 million cubic feet per day (mcfd) of natural gas to the country's output.

Egypt seeks to boost gas production after increasingly turning to imports to meet domestic demand.

The new output from the West Delta includes 50 mcfd from the Sapphire South Central DP well, the third drilled under phase 11 of the West Delta Deep Marine development with investment from Shell, and 10 mcfd from the Scarab D4 well, which was restored after years offline, the ministry said in a statement.

Egypt, once a regional exporter, is having to import some of its gas as its own production has fallen due to aging fields and lack of investment in new fields. Egypt's gas production in May of 3,545 million cubic metres, was down more than 40 per cent from March 2021, according to the Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI) which measures oil and gas production.

On Tuesday, the Egyptian petroleum ministry said three new wells were being drilled to boost production from the country's largest gas field, Zohr, in the Mediterranean, and that another well in the area has already been linked to production adding 65 mcfd to national supply.

The ministry said Zohr's output had dropped to 1.9 billion cubic feet per day by early 2024, well below the peak reached in 2019. It did not give current production data.

This month, Egypt also signed a record $35 billion gas import agreement with Israel's Leviathan field partners.

(Reporting by Mohamed Ezz and Ahmed Elimam; Editing by Susan Fenton)