On the sidelines of the Gastech 2025 Exhibition and Conference in Milan, Karim Badawi, the Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, held meetings with the top executives of a number of international oil and Gas companies to discuss investment opportunities in Egypt.
Badawi discussed with Freeman Shaheen, President of Chevron Global Gas, means of enhancing cooperation in natural gas exploration and production in the Mediterranean Sea, as well as reducing carbon emissions.
Badawi also reviewed ongoing collaborative projects with Chevron in upstream activities in the Mediterranean, particularly in the Nargis offshore and North El-Dabaa areas, in addition to the Lotus sector, the latest area added to the company’s investment portfolio.
The Minister emphasized the importance of accelerating the development of the Nargis field and drilling the appraisal well Nargis-2. He further highlighted the need to expedite the drilling of the exploration well in the offshore North Al-Dabaa area in the Western Mediterranean. The Minister said that it is crucial to fast-track drilling in the concession the company was awarded through the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company’s (EGAS) recent bid round.
Chevron Corporation is a major US-based energy company and one of the world’s largest oil producers. It is a fully integrated company involved in every stage of the petroleum industry, from exploration and production to refining, marketing, and research. Beyond oil and gas, Chevron also produces a variety of petrochemicals and polymers, holds interests in coal and mineral mining, and generates geothermal energy.
A delegation from SLB, led by Jesus Lamas, the company’s President for the Middle East and North Africa, also held talks with Badawi. They reviewed ways to strengthen collaboration between Egypt’s petroleum sector and SLB, a global leader in modern technologies for upstream activities. The discussion focused on adopting effective solutions, including Offshore Ocean Bottom Node (OBN) Seismic Survey technology, integrated digital data analysis, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to interpret geological data.
Additionally, the two sides tackled opportunities to improve the efficiency of existing fields, develop digital transformation systems, and expand technical training programs for Egyptian staff. They also explored new areas for exploration in the Mediterranean Sea.
With an 80-year presence in Egypt, SLB has been leveraging its deep reservoir domain expertise and broad technology portfolio to respond to the geoscience, engineering, and operational challenges found in Egypt’s energy sector.
Badawi had talks with Mathios Rigas, the founder and CEO of the Greek energy company Energean.
Energean, through Energean Egypt, maintains and operates a full-cycle production, development, and exploration portfolio. It operates and owns 100% of each of Abu Qir concession, North East Almreya and North Idku concessions, in addition to 50 % of East Bir El Nus on-shore concession and a 30% interest in North East Hap’y off-shore concession.
The meeting shed light on cooperation to maximize the yields from the company’s different natural gas concessions.
Both sides stressed the importance of expediting the drilling of the company’s exploration wells in the Western Desert. They also discussed new gas exploration opportunities offshore the Mediterranean areas and means to benefit from Energean’s technical solutions to enhance the efficiency of research, exploration, and production operations.
Energean, is planning to optimize its offshore concessions in Egypt while exploring new areas in the Nile Delta Region, according to the company’s operational updates and performance results for the first quarter of 2025 (Q1 2025), ending March 31.
In his meeting with Morten Høegh, Chairman of Höegh Evi Ltd, a global leader in floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure, and Erik Nyheim, the company’s CEO, Minister Badawi reviewed ongoing cooperation on LNG import facilities. Part of Egypt’s LNG imports are handled via the Höegh Galleon, a regasification vessel operated by the Norwegian family-owned Höegh group.
Badawi stressed the importance of this cooperation in ensuring local energy supply security and strengthening Egypt’s LNG reception and handling infrastructure.
Both sides also discussed opportunities for cooperation in clean energy and carbon reduction projects, as well as knowledge exchange, training programs, and capacity-building to enhance the skills of Egyptian cadres in LNG trading and operations.
Egypt deployed the Höegh Galleon regasification unit in July 2024 at Ain Sokhna’s SUMED port. The unit will leave the port in February 2026 to be replaced by the Höegh Gandria. The new unit will provide up to 1,000 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscf/d) of peak liquefied natural gas (LNG) regasification capacity.
The ongoing development of the Zohr field, the largest offshore gas discovery in the Mediterranean, was the focus of Badawi’s meeting with Claudio Descalzi, CEO of Eni, the operator of the field. They looked into the status of exploration and production activities in Egypt as well as future work plans.
They also discussed means to boost regional cooperation to speed up the connection of the Cypriot Cronos gas field to Egypt’s infrastructure. Earlier this year, Egypt and Cyprus signed a deal to transfer gas from Cyprus’s Cronos Field to Egypt’s Zohr infrastructure via an underwater pipeline. The gas will either be liquefied for export to Europe or used to meet Egypt’s energy needs. Eni, is the operator of Cyprus’s offshore Block 6, where the Cronos Field was discovered.
Badawi has recently announced that the Zohr-6 well was brought into production, adding 65 million cubic feet of gas per day (mmcf/d). Now work is underway on Zohr 9 and two other development wells during this fiscal year (2025/2026).
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