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Egypt immediately awarded four blocks of an oil and gas exploration bid round in the Mediterranean and Nile Delta to Italy’s Eni, the UK’s BP, QatarEnergy and Russia’s Zarubezhneft, the Egyptian Petroleum Ministry announced on Tuesday.
Eni will take two of the blocks and a third in a coalition with BP and QatarEnergy, while Zarubezhneft will take the fourth.
On Monday the ministry opened international bidding for exploration of 23 open blocks with a Feb. 25 deadline, Reuters reported.
It includes areas in Egypt’s Western Desert, two in the Eastern Desert, seven in the Gulf of Suez and four in the Red Sea, the ministry said.
Egypt is looking to position itself as a regional energy hub, increasing collaboration in this field with actors including the European Union and Israel.
A game-changing step in the country’s energy ambitions came in 2015 when ENI discovered Zohr, an offshore natural gas site in the Egyptian Exclusive Economic Zone that is the largest field in Eastern Mediterranean region, holding an estimated of 850 billion cubic meters of gas.
In March, QatarEnergy acquired 40% of an offshore exploration area off the Egyptian coast, in the Mediterranean’s North Maraca marine area. ExonMobil owns the remaining 60% of the site.
On Aug. 28, BP pledged to invest $3.5 billion in gas exploration in Egypt over the next three years. The following day, Petroleum Minister Tarek El-Molla said that his government plans to invest $1.5 billion into drilling 35 natural gas wells by 2025.
Since the war in Ukraine broke out in February 2022, due to Western sanctions on Russia over the invasion, European countries have been reducing their reliance on Russian gas and have turned to countries including Egypt to help make up the shortfall.
However, with the world transitioning away from fossil fuels, Egypt will likely face some challenges down the line. Recently, a national shortage of fuel oil and lack of renewable power meant that there were frequent power cuts across Egypt in the summer.
