Emad Hamdi, Chairman Badr al-Din Petroleum Company (Bapetco), said his company will invest $ 380m during 2015-2016 to add new wells. This was to counter the natural decline of production rates and increase production, he said in an interview with Reuters at his office in Cairo.

He added that his company will work through the new fiscal year on “drilling one exploratory well, 12 development wells and 12 water injection wells (to increase production of oil) and repair about 20 wells.”

The attrition rate in the production of Badr al-Din of natural gas, about 15% annually. Bapetco’s investments during the current fiscal year 2014-2015 amounted to $510 million.

He went on to say that his company, which owns about 354 wells in the Western Sahara, was able to increase production of natural gas by about 43 percent in November last year, with the addition of two new wells, Karam and Aseel.

Bapetco production of natural gas is currently 500 mcf/d out of the 4.5 billion feet per day produced by Egypt as a whole.

On another track he explained that his company had begun unconventional drilling operations in Apollonia in the Western Desert, with plans to drill 3 wells this year at a cost of $22 million.

Source: Reuters