Bearing this in mind, it is interesting to note that we are about to enter an exciting, as well as challenging, phase of exploration in the East Mediterranean. Despite the region’s closeness to known hydrocarbon provinces, or maybe just because of this, it is only the offshore Nile Delta that has been explored to any extent. Offshore Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and Cyprus have seen little work done lately, with the exception of a couple of non-exclusive surveys.
Once again, it has been shown that the seismic companies are in the forefront of exploring frontier geological provinces. Taking the initial risk and burden of getting the authorities to plan for the licensing of open acreage, they invest heavily, first in business development, then in seismic data acquisition, processing and interpretation.
As for the East Mediterranean, over the next few years we can expect to see several campaigns to lure the oil industry into exploration in virgin territories. With Egypt’s Nile Delta success story in mind, we believe this should be a fairly easy task.
