Shell’s Mediterranean gas drilling ops lead to ‘encouraging initial indications’

March 12, 2026, by Melisa Cavcic

UK-headquartered energy giant Shell has seen promising initial results off the coast of Egypt, thanks to drilling activities undertaken with a drillship owned by Stena Drilling, a Scotland-headquartered offshore drilling contractor.

As Egypt continues to take decisive steps to shorten the exploration-to-production cycle in its oil and gas sector to make it a competitive hub for upstream oil and gas development and support sustained regional energy sector growth, the drilling results of Shell’s Sirius 1X exploration well in the Northeast Amreya area in the Mediterranean Sea have shown “encouraging initial indications” after reaching the target depth of 2,115 meters, according to the country’s Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources.

This is the first exploratory well drilled by the UK player during 2026 as part of its plan to expand gas exploration and production activities in its concession areas in the Egyptian part of the Mediterranean. The company started its drilling program with the Mina West 2 and Sirius wells in the Northeast Amreya area, using Stena Drilling’s Stena IceMax sixth-generation deepwater drillship.

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Karim Badawi, Egypt’s Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, followed up the drilling operations in the area a few weeks ago, as part of ongoing monitoring of efforts to increase domestic natural gas production. The latest drilling results are said to enhance the chances of developing new gas resources from the exploratory Sirius reservoir, with the possibility of an early development decision during 2027.

Shell and its partner, Kuwait’s KUFPEC, in collaboration with the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS), are perceived to have succeeded in maximizing the benefit from the drilling of the Mina West 2 well to obtain geological and technical data for the Sirius 1X well.

As a result, this is believed to have contributed to achieving significant cost savings by avoiding the drilling of an additional well, specifically for collecting this data. The discovery is planned to be connected to production by 2029, as a subsequent phase to the development of the Mina West field, which is currently underway.

Egypt’s Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources emphasizes that work continues to complete the drilling of the Mina West 2 well, in preparation for it to start production before the end of this year.