Baker Hughes, a GE company, secured a contract from Petrobel, a joint venture between a subsidiary of Italy’s Eni and the Egyptian General Petroleum Corp., for work on subsea production systems for the “supergiant” Zohr gas field.
The contact is for the second phase of the Zohr gas field situated in the Mediterranean Sea, off the Egyptian coast.
Under the deal, Baker Hughes will provide project management, engineering procurement, fabrication, construction, testing and transportation of a subsea production system and will support the installation, commissioning and start-up operations.
Egypt – that has turned a net importer from an exporter over the course of 2016 due to falling production – has deployed two FSRUs in Ain Sokhna that serve as the country’s import terminals.
However, domestic gas discoveries such as Eni’s giant Zohr gas field, that has a potential of 850 billion cubic meters of gas in place and is expected to come into production at the end of 2017, will save Egypt billions of dollars that would otherwise be spent on imports.
Egypt also has an LNG export plant located at Idku, 50km east of Alexandria.