Eni starts gas production from Argo Cassiopea field off Sicily

Eni has begun gas production operations from its Argo Cassiopea field off the coast of the Italian island of Sicily. 

The Argo Cassiopea production project, operated by Eni in a joint venture with Energean, is the largest gas-based energy development initiative in the country. 

Begun three years ago, the project is entirely subsea, with no components visible above the waterline. The gas is sourced from four subsea wells drilled in recent months in the Strait of Sicily and then transported through a 60-km subsea pipeline to the Gela processing plant, on Sicily’s southern coast. From there, the gas is processed and then fed into the national grid.

Eni claims the project is low emissions and capable of carbon neutrality due to the existence of a dedicated installation of 3.6 MWp of photovoltaic panels. The installation, according to Eni, will be enough to offset the project’s Scope 1 and 2 emissions.

Ultimately, Eni points to energy security as the basis for the Argo Cassiopea project, and the firm is also busy with an offshore gas field development project off North Africa through its regional subsidiary Eni North Africa and the National Oil Co of Libya. Argo Cassiopea’s reserves are estimated at around 10Bn cubic metres of gas, with peak annual production expected to be 1.5Bn cubic metres of gas.

In 2022, the Eni subsidiary company Enimed awarded Saipem an offshore engineering and construction contract, to transport and install the offshore gas pipeline connecting the four wells of the Argo Cassiopea field to the Sicilian coast, worth approximately €300M (US$305M). With a length of 60 km and a maximum water depth of 660 m, the 14” gas pipeline was installed by the pipelay vessels Castorone and Castoro 10. Heavy-lift vessel Saipem 3000 installed the umbilicals connecting Cassiopea wells to the Prezioso platform.