Cyprus catching up?

Egypt is far ahead in the race to be the top East Med gas producer, but Cyprus is hoping it will soon move into second place

It's not often in any industry that one comes across an overnight game-changer. But the discovery of the Zohr gasfield 200km (124 miles) offshore Egypt in 2015 was just that. Not only was the find massive, with reserves of 30 trillion cubic feet (850bn cubic metres) of natural gas, but it also broke new geological ground. Most discoveries off the Egyptian coast had been in clastic sedimentary rock in waters relatively close to shore. Egypt's deepwater seabed had been largely written off as unproductive. Italy's Eni, which won the Block 19 Shorouk concession in 2013, had a hunch after studying seismic images that reservoir rock lay 1,400 metres (4,700 ft) below the surface. They were proved r