Senior executives from Azerbaijan’s state oil firm SOCAR this week discussed with Egyptian officials and executives the idea to establish a strategic Egyptian-Azeri partnership in the oil and gas sector, Egypt’s Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources said.
Egyptian Petroleum Minister Karim Badawi met in Cairo with Elkhan Polukhov, Azerbaijan’s Ambassador to Egypt, and an accompanying Azeri delegation, which included Zaur Hasanov, Director of Business Development at SOCAR. The meeting was also attended by Salah Abdel Karim, CEO of the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC).
The officials and executives from the two countries discussed the opportunities and capabilities to establish a cooperation partnership and exchange expertise in oil and gas.
Egypt has just launched a new oil and gas bid round and is inviting international companies to bid for 13 offshore and onshore blocks in a licensing round as it aims to boost domestic oil and gas production.
Companies are invited to bid on six new exploration areas and seven undeveloped discoveries. The undeveloped discoveries are in the Mediterranean, while the six exploration areas include three offshore exploration blocks in the Gulf of Suez and three onshore exploration areas in Egypt’s Western Desert.
The new licensing bid round is part of the North African country’s strategy to attract more investments in its upstream industry and raise domestic oil and gas production.
Foreign firms have recently expressed interest and raised production in Egypt, whose Mediterranean waters have become a major focus of exploration since the 2010s, when Italy’s Eni discovered the huge Zohr gas field offshore Egypt. This is the largest natural gas discovery in the Mediterranean to date, according to Eni.
Azerbaijan’s SOCAR, for its part, is part of a consortium with supermajor BP and Israeli company NewMed Energy, which last month signed a licensing agreement to explore for natural gas offshore Israel. The deal marks BP’s entry into Israel and the first exploration effort outside Azerbaijan for the state company SOCAR.
