By Mohammed Jetutu, in Cairo
With the new discovery in the North Damietta Block in Egypt’s East Nile Delta, announced March 27, 2017, BP has provided more reason for Egypt to pull out of the club of gas importers.
Since 2015, the country has been importing LNG to meet the shortfall in domestic production.
Africa’s largest domestic gas market consumes 2Tcf of gas a year, or 5.5Bcf every day, most of it going to fuel 70% of its 30,000MW electricity production capacity.
In the last three years, however, a string of discoveries, aided by the leap in domestic gas price to as high as $5.9 per thousand cubic feet (Mscf), has been made by international oil companies in the country.
BP’s Qattameya Shallow-1 discovery, arrives right in the middle of two of the company’s most ambitious gas monetization developments. The Atoll Phase One project, in the same North Damietta Block as the Qattameya Shallow-1 discovery, is an early production scheme that will bring up to 300 million cubic feet a day (MMscf/d) gross of gas to the Egyptian domestic gas market starting in the first half of 2018.The Western Nile Delta project will develop five trillion cubic feet (5Tcf) of gas resources. Peak production is expected to be 1.74Bcf/d, by 2020. BP is also currently appraising the Salamat discovery, in the North Damietta concession.
Qattameya Shallow-1 was drilled to a total depth of 1,961 metres in 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. Options to tie the discovery back to nearby infrastructure are being studied.
Qattameya Shallow-1 well is located 60 kilometres north of Damietta city, 30 kilometres south west of Salamat and only 35 kilometres to the west of Ha’py offshore facilities. BP has 100% equity in the discovery.
