Italian energy company Eni said today that it was on course to meet its exploration target for 2017 and that a lengthy outage of its Val d’Agri field would be offset by efficiency measures and early start-ups on other assets.
Eni started production early from three major offshore projects in Angola, Ghana and Indonesia in the first half of 2017.
The business also discovered 500million barrels of new resources in the first half, while production grew by about 200,000 barrels per day, a year-on-year increase of more than 6%.
Furthermore, the company expects to reduce capex by about 18% this year.
The giant Zohr project offshore Egypt is also on track to produce gas by the end of 2017.
First half pre-tax profits at Eni totalled £2billion, up from a surplus of £100million in 2016.
Revenues rose 26% to £30.7billion.
Eni chief executive Claudio Descalzi said the company’s first-half results were strong, which confirmed the “soundness” of its strategy.