Italian oil giant Eni announced on Wednesday it has made a new oil discovery in Mellieha concession, located in the Western Desert of Egypt. The discovery was made through the Arcadia 9 well, drilled on the Arcadia South structure, located 1.5 km south of the main Arcadia field already in production, Eni said in a statement posted on its official website. The well is an 85 feet oil column in the cretaceous sandstones of the Alam Al-Bueib 3G formation, the statement added. The well has been drilled close to existing production facilities and is already tied-in to production, with a stabilised rate of 5,500 barrels of oil per day. According to the statement — following the discovery — two development wells, Arcadia 10 and Arcadia 11, have been drilled back-to-back. The first one is a 25 feet oil column and the second one is 80 feet, within the Alam Al-Bueib 3G formation, while Arcadia 11 also has 20 feet of oil pay in the overlying Alam Al-Bueib 3D formation. The three wells share the same oil-water contact in the discovered reservoir. The discovery adds 10,000 barrels of oil per day to Eni's gross production in the Western Desert of Egypt, the statement noted. Eni said its "successful" implementation of its infrastructure-led exploration strategy in the Western Desert through AGIBA, a joint venture between Eni and the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC), allows a quick valorisation of these new resources," it added. Eni, through its subsidiary International Egyptian Oil Company (IEOC), holds a 38 percent interest in the Mellieha concession, while Russia's oil giant Lukoil holds 12 percent and the EGPC 50 percent. Eni has been operating in Egypt through its subsidiary IEOC Production B.V. since 1954, with the current daily production rate being 320,000 barrels of oil equivalent. The Italian company discovered the giant Zohr gas field, the biggest in the Mediterranean, off the Egyptian coast in 2015. The discovery, which holds an estimated reservoir of 30 trillion cubic feet, has drawn the interest of investors to the country's energy sector.
