Egypt’s Nooros field gas production is now almost at 900 million cubic feet of gas per day and expected to reach 1 billion cubic feet per day in Q1 of 2017, according to Eni.

Eni began production at its Nile Delta offshore field Nooros in September 2015. It formerly said that it expected a peak production capacity of about 160,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2017. Egypt's oil minister, Tarek El Molla, said last month that domestic gas production currently stands around 4.35 billion cubic feet per day compared with consumption of about 5.2 billion.

The country, which was once an energy exporter, turned into a net importer in recent years, due to decreasing production and increasing consumption. Egypt is currently making efforts to reverse that trend, by fast-tracking the development of major gas finds with the aim of achieving energy self-sufficiency by 2020, Reuters reports.

Eni's giant gas field Zohr, which was discovered in August 2015 with an estimated 30 trillion cubic feet of gas, is anticipated to begin production next year and produce about 1 billion cubic feet of gas per day in 2017.

Anita Fatunji