Italian energy company Eni has so far invested $8.4 billion in Egypt's offshore Nooros and Zohr gas fields and is planning to make a $3 billion new investment in the near future, CEO Claudio Descalzi has said. Descalzi's remarks came during his meeting with Egypt's Minister of Petroleum Tarek El-Molla in Cairo, according to a ministry statement Thursday Eni has allocated 70 percent of its global investment in Egypt, Descalzi was quoted by the statement as saying. During the talks, the two officials discussed work progress at the two fields, both discovered by Eni in 2015. Egypt seeks to speed up production from recently discovered fields, with the aim of halting gas imports by 2019 and achieving self-sufficiency. The giant Zohr offshore gas field in the Mediterranean contains an estimated 30 trillion cubic feet of gas, the largest gas discovery ever made in Egypt and in the Mediterranean Sea, The field started production in late 2017, with an initial production of 350 million cubic feet per day. ElMolla said last week that Egypt aims to increase production at the field to 1.75 billion cubic feet per day in August. Nooros field, located in the Nile Delta region, was discovered in July 2015 and started production in September of the same year. In March 2018, Eni said the field had reached production of 32 million cubic metres per day (the equivalent of around 215,000 barrels of oil per day), the highest ever recorded by an Eni field in Egypt in the last 50 years.
