Eni starts up the Zohr field in Egypt and on the same day comes the news of the indictment of the company and Shell in the trial on the alleged bribes in Nigeria. Indicted Paolo Scaroni who was then managing director and the current CEO Claudio Descalzi. The accusation is of international corruption and the trial will begin on March 5 next year.
Zohr is the field of records: it is the largest in the Mediterranean and represents the largest discovery ever made in the area. Eni is the operator of the field (of which sold a 30% stake to Rosneft) and started production in less than 2 and a half years from the discovery, a record time for this type of field, specifies the oil group, which is located in the Shorouk block, offshore Egypt about 190 kilometers north of Port Said. A goal achieved that the CEO Claudio Descalzi welcomes as "a historic day, fruit of our skills, our capacity for technological innovation and our tenacity in pursuing objectives, even the most complex ones, and we must be very proud of this".
The Zohr super-giant has a potential of over 850 billion cubic meters of gas in place (about 5,5 billion barrels of oil equivalent). And Eni recalls that Zohr was discovered in August 2015, obtained the investment authorization after just 6 months in February 2016 and will be able to satisfy part of the Egyptian demand for natural gas for the next decades. An all the more important success – noted the CEO Claudio Descalzi – that “this discovery will transform Egypt's energy landscape, allowing the country to become self-sufficient and transform itself from an importer of natural gas into a future exporter”. Furthermore, by helping to satiate Egypt's hunger for energy to support its development, it will certainly contribute to stabilizing an area still subject to strong geopolitical tensions and critical issues.
In Zhor, Eni put into practice (as in 6 other projects characterized by rapid development and production) the Dual Exploration Model adopted by the company since 2013 and which consists in the early monetization of profits, through the sale of minority stakes such as the one sold to Rosneft in Egypt or to ExxonMobil in Mozambique (35,7% in Area4 for 2,8 billion dollars), while exploration successes increase and before production starts. In this way the time-to-market is faster and there is a reduction in costs for the production of discoveries and an upfront cash flow. “This winning combination – states the Eni press release – allowed the company to generate approximately 2014 billion dollars from exploration activities between 2017 and 9”.
Eni now owns a 60% stake in the Shorouk concession, Rosneft 30% (acquired for 1,125 billion dollars) and BP 10% (it paid ENI 375 million dollars). The group is co-operator of the project through Petrobel, jointly owned by Eni and the state company Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC), on behalf of Petroshorouk, a company jointly owned by Eni and the state company Egyptian Natural Gas holding Company ( IT'S GAS).
The share is quoted at 14,01 euros, up 0,21% at 11,20.
Returning to the trial for international corruption in Nigeria, there are 13 people indicted and two companies. In addition to Descalzi and Scaroni, Malcolm Brinded, president of the Shell Foundation at the time, and three former executives of the Dutch oil company, Peter Robinson, Guy Colgate and John Coplestone, three former Eni managers, Roberto Casula, former head of the exploration division, Vincenzo Armanna, former vice president of the group in Nigeria, and Ciro Antonio Pagano, at the material time managing director of Nae, a company of the Eni group, some alleged intermediaries, Luigi Bisignani, Gianfranco Falcioni and the Russian Ednan Agaev, and the former Nigerian oil minister Dan Etete.
Two other defendants, the intermediaries Emeka Obi and Gianluca Di Nardo have chosen to be judged with an abbreviated procedure. The investigation that led to today's indictment was conducted by Milan prosecutors Fabio De Pasquale and Sergio Spadaro and concerns the operation which, in 2011, led Eni and Shell to pay 1 billion and 92 million dollars to obtain from the Nigerian government the offshore concession Opl-245 on oil exploration. According to the indictment, the amount paid was a maxi bribe intended for members of the Nigerian government.
In a note released in the morning, Eni's Board of Directors acknowledges the decision of the Gup of the Court of Milan, "confirms its confidence in Eni's non-involvement in the alleged corruptive conduct in relation to the aforementioned affair" and expresses "the utmost confidence" in Claudio Descalzi, confident that "the judicial proceeding will ascertain and confirm the correctness and integrity of his work".
