Zohr – A newborn carbonate play in the Levantine Basin, East-Mediterranean

The Levantine Basin in the East-Mediterranean is proven as a prolific hydrocarbon province, with numerous gas fields and discoveries, including several of giant reserve size extending from the over-explored Nile Delta of Egypt and offshore Israel in the south to underexplored Cyprus and Lebanon to the north and east. Many of the gas discoveries to the east are biogenic in origin, although a thermogenic source underlies the Nile Delta, as evidenced by minor oil discoveries and, especially in the pre- Pliocene, ubiquitous gas condensate discoveries (Figure 1). Historically, exploration of the Nile Delta targeted siliciclastic plays since AGIP (now ENI) made the groundbreaking discovery of the Abu Madi Field in the Nile Delta of Egypt in 1967. The Abu Madi gas condensate play was followed offshore with the Baltim discoveries and throughout the 1970s and 1980s this play was exploited, following Miocene channel deposits, broadly deposited during the Mediterranean drawdown of the Messinian Salinity crisis, located in shallow water. IEOC (an ENI subsidiary) drilled deeper targets in the 1980s and found over-pressured gas in Middle Miocene sands in the El Temsah field discovery. In the 1990s exploration in the Delta moved on to target Pliocene turbidite play-fairways in ever deeper water (eg discoveries of Ha’py (Amoco) and Rosetta (BG)), and more recently Early Miocene and Oligocene targets have yielded good results in the Nile Delta for BP (Raven Field) and others. Early Miocene clastics have proved prolific offshore Israel, where, in water depths greater than 1500 m, Early Miocene deep water turbidites provide the reservoirs for more than 30TCF in Noble’s Tamar and Leviathan gas discoveries alone.