Big Oil Looks on as Italian Giant Completes ‘Mission Impossible’
- Gas reserve was found just 28 months before production started
- Egypt governement hopes to save billions on import costs
Claudio Descalzi
Photographer: Christopher Goodney/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
The fact even senior managers privately described the plan as “Mission Impossible” showed the scale of the task: Italian energy giant Eni SpA wanted to produce gas from the Zohr field little more than two years after finding it in August 2015.
But this week, the Mediterranean’s largest gas field -- lying about 200 kilometers (168 miles) off the Egyptian coast -- began pumping, defying skeptics both inside and outside the company.