Dubai’s Dragon Oil starts production from Egypt’s Al Wasl field

State-owned company plans to drill seven new wells in the country by 2026

The Al Wasl field was discovered by Dragon Oil in 2021. Photo: Dragon Oil

Dubai’s Dragon Oil has started crude oil production from the Al Wasl field, the state-owned company’s first oil discovery in Egypt.

The Al Wasl field, discovered in 2021, has an oil reserve of more than 95 million barrels and Dragon Oil started the project with plans for "early production" with a total investment of $200 million, it said in a statement on Tuesday.

The project includes establishing a new offshore production platform and extending a production line and an electricity line to operate oil production pumps, Dragon Oil said.

It also involves a water injection project to maintain high production rates.

Dragon Oil aims to complete the development work of the Al Wasl field “as soon as possible", it said.

It plans to connect the second well south of Belayim 293-6 with the production line by mid-January, to raise the production capacity to 3,000 barrels of crude oil per day, increasing the platform’s production to 6,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

The company also intends to drill seven new wells by 2026 and reach 15,000 barrels per day of crude oil production from the Al Wasl field, it said.

Dragon Oil, a subsidiary of state-owned Emirates National Oil Company, is an upstream oil and gas exploration, development and production company.

It operates in Turkmenistan, Egypt and Iraq.

In October 2019, it committed to investing $1 billion over five years in upstream assets in Egypt after acquiring BP’s stake in the Gulf of Suez.

The global oil industry requires investments of $14 trillion, or about $610 billion a year, until 2045 to meet growing energy demand, Opec said in October.

Of the required amount, $11.1 trillion is needed in the upstream sector, while downstream and midstream requirements are estimated at $1.7 trillion and $1.2 trillion, respectively.

Energy demand worldwide is expected to expand by 23 per cent in the period to 2045, or about three million barrels of oil equivalent a day every year, the producers' group said.

The Al Wasl field, the "largest oil discovery" in the Gulf of Suez region in the past 20 years, signifies Dragon Oil's commitment to support the Egyptian economy, the company said.

It also plans to expand its presence in the Egyptian market this year by stepping up exploration and expansion efforts in various regions, enhancing field development initiatives, and undertaking well restoration to augment oil production in the Gulf of Suez fields.

"Dragon Oil seeks to permanently expand the scope of petroleum discoveries in Egypt over long-term periods, especially since the Egyptian market is currently considered one of the most economically promising markets in the Middle East," the company said.