Italian oil major Eni has made an “important” oil and gas find off the Congolese coast.
The news came as the company revealed problems with its African operations had significantly impacted its half-year results, with profits down 51% on last year.
The company said its two wells, drilled in the Marine XII Block in the Nene’ prospect, suggest the presence of around 600million barrels of oil and 700billion cubic feet of gas.
The Marine 1 well, drilled to a depth of 3,013 metres, found significant wet gas and light oil deposits, confirmed by Nene’ Marine 2 well drilled 2km away.
Eni, who owns a 65% stake in the Marine XII block, is the largest foreign oil and gas firm in Africa – but operations on the continent have had a significant impact on the Italian company’s half-year results.
Production disruptions in Libya and Nigeria because of outages and oil theft, as well as disappointing results by Eni’s subsidiary Saipem, saw profits fall to EU1,818million.
But renegotiations of long-term gas supply contracts with Algerian firm Sonatrach and Russian giant Gazprom gave the company a more positive outlook for the second half of the year.
“First half results were affected by a difficult economic situation across Italy and Europe, production interruption in Libya and Nigeria and by the fall in Saipem’s results,” said Paolo Scaroni, chief executive at Eni.
“In this context I am satisfied with the operational progress achieved in the first half including six production start-ups, of the eight planned for the whole 2013, and the renegotiation of gas contracts with Sonatrach and Gazprom.
“Thanks to these successes we expect a significant improvement in our second half results.”
The company, who initially targeted growth for this year, had to downgrade its 2013 forecast to equal the 2012 results.
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