RWE Dea again discovers gas off the coast of Egypt

RWE Dea AG, Hamburg, has succeeded in making yet another significant gas find off the coast of Egypt. Ruby 2 is the name of the discovery well located about 60 kilometers off the coast of Alexandria in the Mediterranean Sea.

This strike continues the series of successful gas wells in the Nile delta: in the West Med Deep Water (WMDW) concession, partners BP (80 percent working interest) and RWE Dea (with a 20 percent interest in the block) drilled to a water depth of 764 meters, recording another successful strike. In the process, a semisubmersible drilling rig was deployed, whose special equipment makes it suitable for deepsea drilling at very high pressures. "The test run was extremely promising", explained Wolfgang Apel, RWE Dea Area Manager for Egypt / Dubai: "An average production capacity of approx. 30,000 cubic meters of gas was measured per hour."

The Ruby 2 gas discovery marks the preliminary final stage of the highly successful series of offshore drilling operations into the Pliocene gas reservoir of the Tertiary Age (1.7 to 5 million-year-old rock formations). "The next step is to reach the deeper Late Paleocene and Cretaceous levels", said Apel. To this end, the drilling rig will be moved into the neighboring concession of North Alexandria in order to begin work on drilling the Raven 1X well based on the experience gained with Ruby 2.

RWE Dea AG is one of the leading German companies engaged in exploration and production of gas and oil, with diversified activities in a number of key regions.

In addition to oil and gas production in Germany, the company's international upstream activities dealing with exploration and production of gas and oil are focused especially on Norway and North Africa, but also on the United Kingdom, Denmark, Poland, and Kazakhstan.