BP reaffirms commitment to Egypt

20 February 2018
BP CEO Bob Dudley affirmed oil major's commitment to North African country at International Petroleum Week conference in London

BP CEO Bob Dudley told the opening conference of the International Petroleum Week that the oil major is making a major commitment to investing in Egypt’s oil and gas industry this year.

“We want to work with governments who are eager to build a competitive industry,” he said at the event in London on 20 February.

“One example in our portfolio is in Egypt, where we just started up the Atoll project seven months ahead of plan and only 33 months after discovery. That is part of a ramp-up of production in Egypt and part of a global programme to add 900,000 barrels of production by 2021”.

Dudley said on 12 February at a conference in Egypt that BP could invest more than $1bn in Egypt this year.

BP signed a deal with the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS) in 2016 to develop the offshore Atoll field phase one project which will produce up to 300 million cubic feet a day of gas for the Egyptian domestic gas market. BP has a 100 per cent interest in the Atoll concession.

The Atoll field contains an estimated 1.5trn cubic feet of gas and 31m barrels of condensates. BP announced the Atoll discovery in March 2015. Atoll phase one is an early production scheme involving the recompletion of the existing exploration well as a producing well, the drilling of two additional wells and the installation of the necessary tie-ins and facilities required to produce from the field.

BP is one of Egypt’s largest foreign investors. Its joint venture with the Egyptian General Petroleum Company has produced almost 40 per cent of Egypt’s entire oil production, and now produces almost 10 per cent of Egypt’s annual oil and condensate. BP’s joint ventures also produce almost 30 per cent Egypt's total gas.

BP is a 33 per cent shareholder in a natural gas liquids (NGL) plant extracting LPG and propane.

It has a 40 per cent stake in the Natural Gas Vehicles Company, the first company in Africa and the Middle East to commercialise natural gas as an alternative fuel for vehicles.

Cairo has pledged to eliminate arrears owed to foreign oil companies by the end of June 2019 and not to accumulate more as part of its drive to draw new foreign investment to an energy sector. The country owed $2.4bn at the end of June 2017.

“Egypt feels really stable and growing,” Dudley said to reporters after the speech. “We have no receivables from Egypt.”

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