Italian energy group Eni has won two new exploration licences located in the Egyptian offshore of the Mediterranean Sea, the company announced in a statement Monday. The new licences are in North El Hammad and North Ras El Esh, as a result of the competitive 2015 bid round by the state-run Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS). Eni has been awarded a 37.5% participating interest and operatorship in North El Hammad, where it partners with BP (37.5%) and Total (25%), and a 50% participating interest in North Ras El Esh, where it partners with BP (50%) which will act as operator. The two blocks, which will be managed by Eni's subsidiary IEOC, are in the shallow waters of the Mediterranean Sea, facing the Nile Delta and located southwest of the Temsah area and west of the Baltim area, where Eni operates existing fields and production facilities. The North El Hammad and North Ras El Esh blocks cover areas of 1,389 and 1,927 square kilometres respectively. These two new concession agreements follow the recent award of the deep water Karawan and North Leil blocks, strengthening Eni's presence in Egypt, a country of historic and strategic importance for the Company, and further relaunching its exploration activities after the recent and important successes of Nidoco NW and Zohr. A month earlier, Italy's Eni announced its biggest gas discovery ever made in Egypt and in the Mediterranean Sea and could become one of the world's largest natural-gas finds, of gas reserves of up to 30 trillion cubic feet in the Zohr prospect in Egypt's Mediterranean. Eni has been present in Egypt since 1954 and is the main producer in the country with an equity of approximately 190,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.
