Energy — oil & gas in Egypt.

Energy — oil & gas

Egypt's proven reserves sit at 3.4 billion barrels of oil and 2.2 trillion cubic feet of gas. Current production is roughly 700,000 barrels a day of oil and 4.2 billion cubic feet a day of gas. That gas should be enough. It is not. Domestic demand runs to 6.2 bcf/day, leaving a structural 2 bcf/day import gap. Israel's Chevron-operated Leviathan field (a $35 billion deal signed in August 2025) is now supplying Egyptian LNG. This is the shape of Egypt's energy future: managing decline in legacy fields while importing gas to close the gap.

The backbone of Egyptian oil and gas is age. Roughly 85 percent of production comes from fields more than twenty years old: the Western Desert, the Gulf of Suez, and the Nile Delta. These are Saga's territory. Water cut is rising. Decline rates run 5 to 15 percent per year. The pays are thin, heterogeneous, and water-sensitive. They sit in tight carbonates.

The international operator base alongside the state NOC (Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation) includes Shell (via its Bapetco joint venture with EGPC), Apache (through the Khalda Petroleum joint venture in the Western Desert), and Eni, with Chevron, Wintershall, Dragon Oil and GUPCO in secondary roles in the Gulf of Suez and Sinai. Bapetco is the reference brownfield-technology operator in Egypt and clears capital quickly. Apache's Khalda received new Western Desert blocks in October 2025 with a near-term drilling commitment. Eni announced in November 2025 a multi-billion-dollar investment to extend the life of legacy Sinai and Nile Delta assets.

The work is visible in the field. Operators in Egypt are openly discussing AI-enhanced brownfield production. Eni's commitment explicitly targets "extending life of legacy assets" and "short-cycle, infrastructure-led upstream projects." These are exact descriptions of brownfield work.

The technical opportunity is sharp. Horizontal drilling is moving into the Western Desert. Tight-carbonate stimulation, water-disposal engineering, and completion design are the bottlenecks. Operators' technical committees are evaluating foreign completion vendors. The NOC (EGPC) cleared significant outstanding partner payments by mid-2026. Permitting for brownfield recompletion and small infill wells is relatively fast.

In the next 12 to 24 months, the live themes are: tight-carbonate stimulation programmes in Western Desert acreage—candidates for multilateral, multi-stage mechanical stimulation; Eni's Sinai and offshore Nile Delta revitalisation, which will require well-intervention, stimulation and EOR advisory; and brownfield AI-driven production optimisation initiatives signalling appetite for real-time reservoir surveillance and artificial-lift optimisation.