Natural Gas News – December 4, 2017

Natural Gas News – December 4, 2017

Egypt Takes Giant Step Towards Energy Independence

The Oxford Business Group reported: The first flow of gas from the offshore Zohr gas field, located 200 km north of Port Said, is expected in December, according to government officials. Speaking in October, Tarek El Molla, minister of petroleum and mineral resources, said development of the field was 91 percent complete. Initial production is forecast at around 500m-1bn cu feet per day (cfpd), with output projected to rise to 2.7bn in 2019 once all seven fields are operational. Discovered by Italian energy company Eni in 2015, the Zohr field has 30trn cu feet of estimated reserves, making it one of the largest finds to be developed in recent years. The project has generated significant investment interest, with Russian energy giant Rosneft buying a $1.1bn stake in the field from Eni in October. The Italian firm will hold 60 percent of the development, with Rosneft taking 30 percent and BP 10 percent. Less than a month after this announcement came the news that a second large-scale gas development is scheduled to come on-line before the end of the year. For more visit oilprice.com or click http://bit.ly/2A2bHkN

U.S. Vastly Overstates Oil Output Forecasts, MIT Study Suggests

Bloomberg reported: Researchers at MIT have uncovered a flaw in the Energy Department’s official forecast which may overstate oil and gas production in the years to come. The culprit, they say, lies in the Energy Information Administration’s premise that better technology has been behind nearly all the recent output gains, and will continue to boost production for the foreseeable future. Instead, the research suggests increases have been largely due to low energy prices, which led drillers to focus on sweet spots where oil and gas are easiest to extract. Justin B. Montgomery, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the study’s authors said “This compounds year after year, like interest, so the further out in the future the wells are drilled, the more that they are being overestimated.” For more visit bloomberg.com or click https://bloom.bg/2zNPDWZ