BP and Eni subsidiary International Egyptian Oil Company (IEOC) have reported two gas discoveries at Taurt North and Seth South in the pair’s North El Burg offshore concession in Egypt’s Nile Delta.

The British supermajor said the pair of finds were the fourth and fifth to be made in the concession following the Satis-1 and Satis-3 Oligocene deep discoveries and last year’s Salmon-1 shallow Pleistocene discovery.

The two latest wells were drilled by IEOC on behalf of operator BP using the Scarabeo IV rig in water depths of 110 and 78 metres respectively.

“The wireline logs, fluid samples and pressure data confirmed the presence of gas in one Pleistocene interval in Taurt North and two Plio-Pleistocene intervals in Seth South,” BP said.

Options to tie both discoveries to nearby existing infrastructure are being studied, BP said.

BP operates the concession awarded to it in June 2005 on a 50% stake, with IEOC holding the other half.

The concession lies in water depths of 60 to 100 metres, and is situated between the BP-operated Ras El Bar development concession and the IEOC-operated Offshore Baltim development concession.

At Ras El Bar BP operates the concession on a 50% stake under its Pharaonic Petroleum Company joint venture with Egyptian General Petroleum Company (EGPC) and Egypt Natural Gas Holding (Egas), with IEOC holding the other half.

In June, BP and IEOC saw first gas three months early from Ras El Bar’s Seth field, where output is expected to reach 170 million standard cubic feet per day.

BP has interests in a total of eleven concessions in the Nile Delta, with operatorship of six.

The British supermajor has racked up investments worth more than $17 billion in Egypt, making it one of the country’s largest foreign investors spanning nearly 50 years.

Its Gulf of Suez Petroleum Company (Gupco), another joint venture with EGPC, is currently producing almost 15% of Egypt’s national crude production.

The company and its partners also produce close to 40% of Egypt’s total domestic gas demand.

For its part, Eni is Egypt’s largest foreign energy player with total operated production of approximately 236,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2011.

It is currently refocusing its Egyptian exploration on deeper plays in the Western Desert, as well as in the Mediterranean and Sinai, as part of a $3 billion investment ramp-up that has already yielded February’s large oil find with the Emry Deep-1X well.

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