Two more wells on Eni’s drilling agenda at Mediterranean gas field

With a gas production increase in mind, Italy’s energy giant Eni is set on drilling two additional wells at a natural gas field in the Mediterranean off the coast of Egypt.

Based on the data provided by the African Energy Council, which credits the information to a government source cited by Asharq Business, Eni intends to spud two new gas wells at Egypt’s Zohr field next year. To this end, the Italian giant has earmarked an investment of $360 million.

Currently, the European oil major is drilling slant wells 9 and 13 using the Saipem 10000 rig to boost output by 149 million cubic feet/day (bcfd) by the end of May 2025, thanks to investments totaling $160 million.

The rig came to Egypt on January 28, 2025, to drill two deepwater wells at the Zohr field, with the aim of reaching 220 million cubic feet of gas per day. This field lies 200 kilometers north of Port Said in the Shorouk area.

According to the undisclosed source, Zohr, discovered in 2015 and brought online in 2017, currently produces about 1.5 billion cubic feet of gas a day. This is perceived to be less than half its 2019 peak output of 3.2 billion cubic feet per day.

The Zohr supergiant field’s production hit the 2 billion cubic feet per day mark in 2018 and 2.7 bcfd in 2019, when the operator planned to reach the 3.2 bcfd target by the year’s end. The field is estimated to contain 480 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe).

Eni is also busy with oil and gas developments elsewhere, as confirmed by its recent action taken to team up with Argentina’s YPF on the evaluation of a phase of a proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) project on the South American country’s Atlantic coast.

The Italian giant is already working on various other LNG projects, including the one in Mozambique, where it recently achieved the 100th LNG cargo from its FLNG in the African country and secured the Council of Ministers’ approval for its Coral Norte/North FLNG project.