US Merlon International Oil Company decided to invest $54m in the development and production operations at its Fayum concession in Egypt during fiscal year 2017/2018, reported Al Mal News.
An official with the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) stated that the American company will close the current fiscal year 2016/2017 with an investments estimated at around $64m out of $88m targeted budget.
The company’s subsidiary in Egypt is Petrolsella which is a joint venture between EGPC and Merlon. Petrosella’s CEO, Taher Abdel Riheem, stated that the company had followed certain measures to decrease its expenditure without affecting its operations in the concession. He further explained that despite the increase of USD exchange rate, the approval of service and contracting companied to receive their payments in EGP instead of USD helped in decreasing the budget assigned for the current and next fiscal years.
Abdel Riheem assured that the company’s work and operations will not be affected by the decrease of the injected investments. He added that the company will proceed according to its timeframe in order to keep production ratio and compensate the natural fields decline.
He concluded that Merlon will add a new drilling rig in the concession during January or February 2016. In addition, it will run a 3D seismic analysis on the Fayoum concession using the new rig in order to discover new wells.
