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Shell to squeeze more out of West Delta Deep Marine: Shell Egypt and its partners will drill three new development wells in the offshore West Delta Deep Marine (WDDM) concession later this year, it said in a statement (pdf) on Thursday. The project is expected to provide an additional 200 mn cubic feet of gas per day and will cost more than USD 200 mn, according to Asharq Business, citing what it says is an unnamed government official.
New phase to come online next year: Drilling will start in late 2023, subject to regulatory approvals, with production expected to come on stream in 2024. The Burullus and Rashid petroleum companies — both joint ventures between Shell and the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) — will handle the drilling and production of the new wells. Petronas is a 50% non-operating partner alongside operator Shell in the concession.
Output at WDDM has been on a slow decline for years: The WDDM concession at its peak in the late 2000s produced in excess of 2 bn cubic feet per day. Output has fallen gradually in the years since and last year totaled around 300 mn cf/d. Shell is forecasting a 491 bn cf shortfall in gas deliveries in Egypt between 2023 and 2025, largely due to lower WDDM production, it said in its annual report last year.
OIL MINISTRY WANTS USD 8 BN ANNUALLY OF UPSTREAM INVESTMENT-
A plan drawn up by the Oil Ministry hopes to draw USD 8 bn of investment into the oil and gas sector during the current fiscal year,Minister Tarek El Molla told Asharq Business on Thursday. The funds will go into exploration, research and development, and operation expenses, El Molla said on the sidelines of the OPEC+ meetings in Vienna.
We’ve heard this target before: El Molla was quoted in February as saying he expected to see some USD 8 bn invested in the sector this year.
And we know where some of it is coming from: El Molla’s statement comes on the heels of his announcement last week that multinational energy firms Eni, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP will deploy a combined USD 1.8 bn to drill 35 gas exploration wells in the Mediterranean and Nile Delta over the next two years.
Our annual production of natural gas is expected to hit 6 tn cubic feet by 2025, a source at the Oil Ministry told us. That’s more than double our annual production in 2021, which totaled 2.45 tn cubic feet, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The 2025 estimate includes gas derived from existing concessions, the 35 new exploration wells, and imports from Israel, our source told us, citing studies by multinational energy companies.
