Italy's ENI aims to drill 140 new wells over the next four years to 2016, part of an ambitious $28 billion programme the company hopes will boost production in African markets.
Heavily invested in the resource-rich continent, ENI last month cut its production targets to reflect shrinking volumes from Libya and Nigeria, saying it expected output to be lower than in 2012.
"We are targeting 3 billion barrels of equity resource in four years. If achieved this will give us access to new resources at an exploration cost of $1.2 per barrel," Luca Bertelli, ENI's executive vice president for exploration, told an African oil and gas conference.
"With the results achieved so far in 2013 we are very confident that this target will be met," he said at the conference, organised by Global Pacific & Partners.
Bertelli said the Italian company aimed to spend an average of $7 billion a year to develop a variety of projects in deep-water Nigeria, Ghana and Mozambique. A giant discovery in Mozambique's Rovuma basin is the group's biggest resource with an estimated 80 trillion cubic feet of gas.
"Production is expected to grow with an average production growth of 3.2 percent per year," Bertelli said.
Last month, the group saw its oil and gas production fall 3.8 percent in the third quarter to 1.653 million barrels of oil equivalent a day.
