BP fires up gas field offshore Egypt

Oil major BP has started gas production from its latest development ‎offshore Egypt – the Qattameya gas field in the North Damietta offshore concession.

Through BP’s joint venture, Pharaonic Petroleum Company (PhPC), the Qattameya field has been developed ‎through a one-well subsea development and tie-back to existing infrastructure.‎

Announcing the production start-up, BP said on Monday that the field is ‎expected to produce up to 50 million cubic feet of gas per day.

The Qattameya discovery was announced in March 2017. It is located approximately 45 km west ‎of the Ha’py platform.

It is tied back to the Ha’py and Tuart field ‎development via a new 50km pipeline and is also connected to their existing subsea ‎utilities via a 50 kilometre umbilical.

Karim Alaa, BP’s North Africa regional president, said: “By building on BP’s significant ‎existing assets and infrastructure offshore Egypt, we were able to develop Qattameya ‎efficiently and economically. Creating value through high quality, efficient oil and gas ‎developments is a key part of bp’s strategy. We see this as a great example of resilient ‎hydrocarbons development.

‎“We are proud to have brought this project safely onstream through an extremely ‎challenging period. Our team continues to work to support Egypt realising the potential of ‎its energy resources, adding to our track-record of delivery and enabled by our established ‎partnerships with the Egyptian petroleum sector”.

BP holds a 100 per cent equity in the North Damietta offshore concession in the East Nile Delta. ‎

Gas production from the field is directed to Egypt’s national grid.‎

It is worth mentioning that the Qattameya Shallow-1 exploration well was drilled to a total depth of 1,961 metres in a water depth of approximately 108 metres using the El Qaher II jack-up rig.

The wireline logs, pressure data and fluid samples confirmed the presence of 37 metres of net gas pay in high-quality Pliocene sandstones.