- A US company today announced two major natural gas discoveries in Egypt, one onshore at the Mediterranean coast and another in Egypt western desert region, close to the Qasr field. The Syrah discovery in the western desert was described as one of region's largest ever, with "estimated reserves of 2 trillion cubic feet of gas and 45 million barrels of condensate."
The announcement was made today by the Texas-based oil and gas company Apache Corporation, which already runs significant operations in Egypt. According to Apache's Vice-President in charge of Egyptian operations, Rodney Eichler, the Syrah discovery represents "the largest discovery in Apache's history."
The most important discovery announced by the oil company is termed the Syrah 1X, located on Apache's 100 percent-contractor-interest Khalda Concession. The discovery is located close to but separate and down-dip from the large Qasr Jurassic oil and gas field in Egypt's Western Desert region. Test drilling at Syrah 1X had resulted in 46.5 million cubic feet (MMcf) of natural gas per day.
According to Mr Eichler, the Syrah 1X discovery has estimated reserves of 2 trillion cubic feet of gas and 45 million barrels of condensate. "Delineation of the structure will take additional wells, but seismically, the Syrah field is potentially at least one-quarter the size of Qasr," Mr Eichler said. "That would rank the new-field discovery the third-largest Jurassic gas field found to date in the Western Desert," he added.
Apache announced that it planned to produce Syrah's gas through its new Qasr field production facility starting this summer, adding to the company's present Western Desert gross production of 300 MMcf of gas per day. "Apache has contracts that will more than double its Western Desert production to 637 MMcf of gas per day as additional processing capacity comes on line over the next several years," the Texan company said in a statement today.
The company at the same time announced a second discovery of a somewhat smaller scale. The Tanzanite 1X discovery, located onshore on Apache's West Mediterranean Concession, had test- flowed 5,296 barrels of oil and 7.4 MMcf of gas per day, the company said. There also already exist commercial plans for his discovery.
The new well at the Tanzanite 1X discovery was to be connected to the North Alamein processing facilities, Apache announced. "Production will commence upon approval of a development lease by the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation," the company added. The well was also to be designed to test and produce overlying reservoirs at the same location.
Also for the Egyptian government, the natural gas discoveries at the West Mediterranean coast and the Western Desert are good news. Cairo authorities are trying to strengthen Egypt's position as a major regional gas producer and exporter and have recently started investing heavily in export infrastructure.
Egypt has taken recent initiatives to harmonise and strengthen the regional Mashrek (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) electricity market, as well as the trans-Mashrek gas market. In addition, the European Union (EU) is cooperating with Cairo authorities to secure long-term gas deliveries from Egypt to the large markets in Southern Europe.
So far, much of Egypt's gas production is consumed locally or sold to neighbouring Jordan, but large export schemes towards Europe are already agreed upon. Egypt also is looking at potential gas markets in North America, according to the Cairo government.
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