Italian energy company Eni reportedly will sell 20 percent of the Zohr gas field, the largest gas discovery in the Mediterranean and made by Eni last year, to Russian Lukoil, industry sources say. The works are coming along quickly and at the end of February they received the extraction authorisation.
The extraction is planned to get underway in 2017 and will have recovered 500,000 barrels by 2019. The project is valued at five billion euros, but the investment in the fields will come to 12 billion. It’s also for this reason that the administrative director Eni Claudio Descalzi has said on several occasions that Eni won’t get far with 100 percent of Zohr in its pocket.
There is also another gas field that will be partly sold before Zohr, however. It is in the Mozambique Channel, where Eni has been operating for months to reduce the cost by involving other partners. It’s slightly different however, as the Area Four gas is part of a large area of fields therefore will take 50 billion of investment.
In the Milan Stock Exchange Eni’s shares increased by around 1 percentage point to reach 13.29 euros after La Repubblica reported on the alleged deal for the sale of shares in the gas fields.
SOURCE / Italian Insider
