The international oil company said on Wednesday it was co-operating with officials from both the Netherlands and Italy as they investigate the $1.1bn deal, which Shell signed five years ago alongside Eni, the Italian oil company.

But in order to extract those resources, BP has had to wage a battle to control inflated costs and root out fraud, internal documents and interviews with former employees of BP and its contractors show.

Eni expects 1.6 billion boe in oil and gas discoveries during the period while maintaining average exploration spending in line with 2015 levels. Notwithstanding an 18% reduction in overall upstream capex, cumulative production growth of 13% to 2019 is expected.

Eni has already developed phases 4 and 5 of the South Pars gas field as well as two phases of Darkhovin oilfield. It has shown interest in developing Iran’s North Pars gas field and also the third phase of Darkhovin oilfield.

The $2.5 billion East-West pipeline connects Galkynysh and other fields in the east of the country to its Caspian coast, from where a proposed Trans-Caspian link could deliver gas to Azerbaijan and then to Europe.

“We're interested in seeing more interconnected markets in Europe. We obviously can deliver very flexibly to any terminal; we're not bound into delivering to just one location, as you would be with a pipeline, and what we're really interested in doing is securing new markets, developing integrated projects possibly involving power plants as well, or floating re-gas infrastructure with a power plant behind it, a business model we've operated in Chile; we're looking at doing something similar in Croatia,”

Italy’s Eni executed a sale and purchase agreement to sell a 12% stake in Saipem to Fondo Strategico Italiano, as part of a plan designed to collect €6.5 billion.

Eni net loss: €0.95 billion for the quarter; €0.36 billion in the nine months.

Eni has made a world class supergiant gas discovery at its Zohr Prospect, in the deep waters of Egypt. The discovery could hold a potential of 30 trillion cubic feet of lean gas in place covering an area of about 100 square kilometres.

Under the second stage of the Production Sharing Agreement of the Shah Deniz Project in Azerbaijan, LUKOIL Overseas Shah Deniz Ltd. (a fully-owned PJSC LUKOIL subsidiary) has signed in Baku a 12 year credit-facility agreement with a consortium of banks to borrow USD 1 billion.