Sahara Oil & Gas Company (SOG) is one of Sahara for Projects and Investment Company (SPIC) entities. It is specialized in upstream (E&P) activities. The Company started under Sapesco umbrella in 1998 as new business line to invest in the E&P activities.

It was established and registered officially under the name of SOG in year 2004 to explore and exploit oil and gas in Egypt’s different areas. Since the Company’s establishment, its objective and mission were to acquire a portfolio of concessions and use its experienced staff and other tools to achieve the maximum success and returns for the benefit of the shareholders, considering the importance of HSE in all the operation.

Areas of Activities

Currently the Company has shareholding in four concessions (100% contractor share in West Qarun, 50% contractor share in North July, 55.4% contractor share in SWGEZ, and 20% contractor share in Zaafarana). The Company is the operator of West Qarun, while the other concessions are operated by other partners (IPR in Fanar & SWGEZ, Pico in Zaafarana), in addition to taking the responsibility of the operator SNB in North Bahariya Concession.

Management & Staff Capabilities

The managerial staff of the Company has long and wide experience in upstream work of the Petroleum Sector Companies either in management or in technical and other aspects. Additionally, the under staff has enough experience in all the related work disciplines (including Geological and Geophysical data interpretation and studies; Petrophysical data analysis; reservoir characterization; integrated reservoir studies, including simulation ones; development plans preparation; reservoir management; wells drilling and workover programs preparation; maximizing wells deliverability; artificial wells design; implementing secondary and tertiary recovery projects; surface facilities design and de-bottle necking; planning and follow up; budgets preparation; and Economics evaluation studies). The staff is kept trained and updated with the latest technology to improve the operation performance considering the positive economics results to avoid wasting the expenditures.

Work Facilities

The office of the Company was well chosen to provide a comfortable work atmosphere for the employees and equipped with the best-chosen hardware and software tools to secure the best outcome in terms of design or data analysis. The used softwares in company work are Geographic’s for Exploration; Petrel, OFM, and Eclipse for Operations; Peep for Economics Evaluation, and Comsys for Finance.

Company Success in Operated Areas

In the concession areas where the Company is the operator (West Qarun & North Bahariya), it succeeded to comply with HSE requirements and apply the latest technology in the operations, which reflected positively on the reserves and production of both concessions.

After getting the renewal of the West Qarun Concession, the Company started immediately implementing the obligations of the new agreement offered as justification to Authorities for approval to spend 30 million dollars Capex, other than Opex, on two stages for drilling development and injector wells, supply water wells, and construction of new water injection and treatment facilities projects. The work is undergoing and it will keep the production of the Concessions always growing.

Meanwhile, in NB Concession, the development of the Concession fields is seriously undergoing, including development and water injection wells drilling, in addition to treatment facilities project, and it will help to increase the Concession fields production always growing.

With regard to the non-operated Concessions, Zaafarana Concession, located in the Gulf of Suez and operated by Pico, has production potential close to 4,000 barrels of oil per day (b/d). The Concession renewal is in the approval process and expected to be secured soon to start implementing the renewal obligation to complete the development and continue increasing its production.

The other two Concessions are marginal operated by IPR, located in the Gulf of Suez, and the production potential of North July is around 500 b/d, while the SWGEZ potential is around 100 b/d. The workover to increase its productivity is currently under study.

Company Future Strategy

As its future strategy, the Company aims to continue to focus relentlessly on safety, reliability, and systematic management of risk. It further looks at assuring the quality execution of its operations, reservoir management, and projects, considering the greatest sense of value and return while keeping growing value of its assets through increasing its reserves and cost optimization. Furthermore, the Company aims to always continue increasing the capability of its staff (management and under), as well as its work facilities, in addition to focusing on having new opportunities – either new Concessions or management and operations – on behalf of the others in their Concessions, local or abroad, to repeat the success story achieved, especially in the operated Concessions (West Qarun & North Bahariya).