In a press release by the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, five global firms have been awarded contracts to perform seismic and 3D surveys worth a total of $750m.

An official with Ganoub El Wadi Company (Ganope) stated to Egypt Oil&Gas that the five awarded companies are CGG, British Geological Survey (BGS), GeoX Limited Egypt, TGS-NOPEC Geophysical Company, and Western Geco Data Services Company.

This comes as Ganope conducted a project to collect geophysics data for the open areas operated by Ganope, which was concluded in mid December. The results of the project that was conducted by US Geological Survey (USGS) showed that Egypt has around 6b barrels of crude oil and 23b barrels of natural gas equivalents offshore the Red Sea. The country further has 8b barrels of equivalents in onshore areas. However, the lack of geological and geophysical data for these areas has discouraged investors in the discoveries. Accordingly, Ganope started a tender for seismic studies to put together data packages that will be available for future exploration and development within the designated locations.