During its Q2 media roundtable, Wintershall Dea CEO Mario Mehren stated that Egypt’s output makes up 10% of the company’s production.

“Egypt has been contributing production to our performance this year. Egypt stands for roughly 10% of our production around 30,000-35,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. In terms of financial contributions, the entire MENA region has contributed €80 million, in terms of EBITDAX to the Q2 total EBITDAX of Wintershall Dea €922 million,” Mehren said.

The roundtable highlighted the company’s interest in CCS and carbon-capturing projects in its global portfolio, which includes Norway and Denmark. As for Egypt, Dawn Summer, the company’s COO stated: “The role of countries like Algeria and Egypt for European energy supply has been clearly recognized in the last year. Intact resources, good infrastructure a strategic location and a market just across the Mediterranean, an increasing energy diplomacy, agreements such as the EU-Egypt-Israel gas deal reflect this growing importance.”

“I am particularly pleased that our DISOUCO JV is the first company in Egypt to have eliminated routine flaring. Operated by the joint venture, in which we are partners with EGAS, Disouq has made a small but very important step for the further development and sustainability for the sector in Egypt,” Summers noted.

As for operations and development in Egypt, Summers told Egypt Oil & Gas “Egypt is extremely important to our portfolio. It remains core. Wintershall Dea is aligned with Egypt’s agenda to deliver and increase gas supplies and also deliver low-carbon efficient models. The focus in Egypt for us is both offshore Nile Delta and onshore Nile Delta. Offshore, we partner with bp in the West Nile Delta project and we are focused on maintaining stable production in the West Nile Delta project, but also expanding and extending the field life. We call West Nile Delta Phase 2, and Raven Phase 2 where we have been awarded an exploration block called North West Abu Qir with bp as the operator. So, offshore Nile Delta, we will be focused on developing the North West Abu Qir exploration concession, which is very good news.

“We are very happy to have found two discoveries, one is East Damanhour exploration block, where we had a gas find in January, and this is a very good example our ILX exploration strategy where we will be able to find and develop and tie back those exploration finds to our DISOUCO facilities in a very efficient way. The second one is the Abu Madi find which was discovered in April, which is another example of our ILX exploration strategy, and again will be another example of tying this field back to our DISOUCO onshore facilities.”

The company has had stable operational overall performance, with a daily quarterly production of 322,000 barrels of oil equivalent (boe) for the quarter, which is higher than the daily output in Q2 2022 by 8000 boe.

Wintershall Dea adjusted net income €203 million, up 30% year-on-year (YoY), thanks to a lower effective tax rate.

The company announced “free cash flow of -€522 million, significantly lower YoY, due to softer commodity price environment and €1.0 billion of final 2022 tax payments in Norway based on strong earnings in 2022.”