When QatarEnergy announced its farm-in transaction with ENI, acquiring a 40% stake in the North Rafah block in late October 2025, media reports cited it as the company’s seventh offshore position in Egypt.
The North Rafah acquisition had come less than three weeks after the company had teamed up with Shell to acquire a 27% participating interest in the North Cleopatra block in the same country.
Qatar’s state hydrocarbon firm had been creeping up the African hydrocarbon map for a while, but now it is all over the place. Last June, it was involved in the Algerian bid round, winning a new exploration block, named Ahara, as a partner with TOTALEnergies.
From Namibia through Côte d’Ivoire to Morocco, the one mid-eastern company likely to show up in an African bid round