Output from Egypt’s 5tcf West Nile Delta (WND) project has collapsed to just 270mn cfd MEES learns, as operator BP (82.75%) and German partner Wintershall Dea (17.25%) continue to face issues bringing the project’s third ‘Raven’ phase online. While Wintershall says WND “provides critical gas supply” to Egypt, 270mn cfd equates to a mere 4.5% of Egypt’s 2020 gas output of 5.98bn cfd.

The ‘Phase-1’ Libra and Taurus fields came online in March 2017 via tie back to processing facilities at Idku that had been used to process gas from Shell’s offshore WDDM fields. That there was ample spare capacity was due to the faster-than-expected decline at Shell’s fields (MEES, 19 February). So perhaps BP should not have been surprised when Libra and Taurus output rapidly collapsed. From an initial 700mn cfd, output slumped to just 380mn cfd for 2018 (MEES, 15 March 2019). (CONTINUED - 679 WORDS)