Hopes run high for the East Med

Possible major new discoveries, along with rising production and simmering regional geopolitics, make 2019 a year of reckoning

Egypt will be forging ahead in the coming 12 months, building on the success of the past three years, with more gas finds and exports of LNG. Eni is expected to announce a major new discovery at the Noor prospect, about 50km (31 miles) offshore Sinai. Together with a number of smaller gasfields, this will bolster Egypt's gas production and support LNG exports. Eni will raise output at the Zohr gasfield to 3.2bn cf/d by the end of 2019, up 0.5bn cf/d from the originally planned production plateau, the icing on the cake of a remarkable project. Following completion of the negotiations between the Damietta LNG plant partners and the Egyptian government to settle an arbitration award against the