Sunday 5 March 2017

Mena countries need to get creative when exploring for oil | The National

Mena countries need to get creative when exploring for oil | The National:

"By August 2015, Eni seemed out of luck in the eastern Mediterranean. Two wells drilled off the shore of Cyprus had been failures. Several other companies looked at data on its deep-water block north of Egypt, where Shell had sunk ten wells in previous years without any real success, but decided against taking a share. There was a promising deeper structure with untested geology, but the Italian company would have to go it alone. Eni drilled in almost a kilometre and a half of water, then through more than four thousand metres of sand, shales and salt. During the Miocene period, six million years ago, the entire Mediterranean dried up, leaving a thick layer of salt – ideal for trapping any oil or gas that formed below it. And Eni’s boldness was rewarded – the giant Zohr discovery, with 32 trillion cubic feet of gas. For a well costing US$100 million, Eni then sold 10 per cent of the find to BP for $375m, and 30 per cent to Rosneft for $1.12 billion, repaying its initial investment many times over even before a molecule of gas is produced."



'via Blog this'

No comments:

Post a Comment