Italian oil company Eni has announced a second oil discovery in the the B1-X exploration prospect located in Egypt’s Western Desert. 

The discovery is located 130 kilometres north of the oasis of Siwa in the South West Meleiha license area. The well was drilled to a depth of 4,523 metres. It was opened to production and delivered 5,130 barrels a day (b/d) of light oil with associated gas. 

In a statement the company said: “The discovery on B-1X confirms the high exploration and production potential of deep geological sequences of the Faghur Basin.”

The production is expected to be routed to already existing infrastructures and then shipped to the El-Hamra terminal through pipelines, after the development plan is approved by Egypt’s Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources. 

Eni, through its subsidiary International Egyptian Oil Company (IEOC), holds a 100 per cent stake in South West Meleiha license.

IEOC currently produces 55,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day from the Egyptian Western Desert.

Eni has been present in Egypt since 1954 and the volume of hydrocarbons it produces in the country is expected to increase significantly over the next 12 months as production increases at the Zohr field.

In May, Eni announced the start-up of the third production unit (T-2) of the Zohr project, increasing the installed capacity to 1.2 billion cubic feet a day (bcf/d).

Zohr first came online in December 2017.

Eni and its state-owned partner on the project, Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS), are aiming to produce 2 bcf/d by end 2018, followed by a plateau of 2.7 bcf/d in 2019.

The Zohr field has more than 30 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas in place and is located in the offshore Shorouk Block (190 kilometres north of Port Said). The project is being executed by Petrobel, the Operating Company jointly held by Eni and EGPC, on behalf of Petroshorouk.

Eni is likely to bring even larger volumes online over the coming years.

The Italian oil company is due to begin drilling an exploratory well at its Noor field in Egypt’s North Sinai in around six weeks.

Egypt’s cabinet approved the 80.32 million Egyptian pounds ($105 million) deal to explore the North Sinai region of the Mediterranean Sea in March.

In June it was reported by local media that the Noor field reserves are expected to reach over 90 trillion cubic feet, three times that of the Zohr reserves.

Eni’s CEO Claudio Descalzi held a meeting with Minister of Oil Tarek al-Mula in June, and said that his company has allocated 70 per cent of its global investments to Egypt.