Trident Petroleum Egypt signed a new petroleum agreement for oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Suez area. The agreement entails a minimum investment of $4.5m, a signature bonus of $500,000, and the drilling of six exploratory wells, reports Egypt Oil & Gas.

The contracted area lies in Block 6, North West of Tair Al-Bahr, in the Gulf of Suez covering an area of ​​191 square kilometers.

The agreement was signed by Tarek El Molla, Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, and Ganoub El Wadi Petroleum Company (Ganope) Chairman, Abubakar Ibrahim, along with the Chairman of Trident, Ihab Awad.

The minister stressed that the new agreement was one of the fruits of the recent international bid round conducted by Ganope, contributing new investments to accelerate exploration activities meant to boost reserves and utilize the country’s oil wealth to meet the needs of the local market.

He added that the fact that such agreements were continuing to be signed by petroleum sector despite the drop in world oil prices is a positive message and a vote of confidence that Egypt was still attractive to petroleum investments. He clarified that the Gulf of Suez region still enjoyed good prospects for investment, in light of exploratory and technological advances taking place in the petroleum industry.

This agreement was one of the 11 new agreements made on behalf of EGPC, EGAS and GANOPE, to be issued after the required legislation is passed. Total investments are at minimum of about $5.446m with signature bonuses worth $62.2m. 34 wells will be drilled by virtue of these agreements. The number of agreements the petroleum sector has signed from November 2013 will reach 64 with this latest agreement, with investments totaling in at a minimum of $14.3b with signature bonuses of $977.3m to drill 274 wells.