The Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) has announced a significant new oil and gas discovery at the Abu Sennan brownfield, located in Egypt’s Western Desert, according to an official statement from the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources.
Spanning over two-thirds of Egypt’s landmass, the Western Desert is a vast section of the Sahara Desert, long regarded as a promising but underexplored hydrocarbon region.
Preliminary test results from the GPR-1X well reveal encouraging production levels, with daily outputs reaching up to 1,400 barrels of crude oil and one million cubic feet of natural gas from the Bahariya formation.
This discovery comes amid Egypt’s ambitious plans to expand its oil exploration efforts. For the 2024/2025 fiscal year, the government has allocated $1.2 billion to drill 110 exploratory wells, part of a broader strategy targeting $7.2 billion investment to drill 586 wells by 2030.
It estimates that the new find could add approximately two million recoverable barrels of crude oil to Egypt’s reserves.
Mohamed Abdel Majeed, Chairman of EGPC, confirmed that the well is currently undergoing production testing. He also highlighted promising signs of further hydrocarbon potential within the Abu Rawash G and B formations, based on recent electrical logging data.
Notably, this marks the second major discovery in the Abu Sennan area within three months, with both breakthroughs attributed to the use of advanced artificial intelligence technologies deployed by EGPC teams.
Officials emphasize that these findings underscore the untapped resource potential of Egypt’s Western Desert and demonstrate the critical role modern technologies play in revitalizing mature oil fields.
Egypt continues to position itself as a regional energy hub, leveraging major discoveries such as the Zohr gas field in the Mediterranean Sea, which is estimated to hold 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, further boosting the country’s strategic energy ambitions.
