Italian company Eni said on Wednesday it had made a major gas discovery in the Nour exploration prospect located in the Nour North Sinai Concession off the Egyptian coast. "The Nour-1 New Field Wildcat (NFW), which has led to the discovery, was drilled by the Scarabeo-9 semi-sub in a water depth of 295 meters and reached a total depth of 5,914 meters," the company said in a statement on its website. The Nour-1 well found an estimated gas column of 90 meters, Eni said, adding that the well has yet to be tested. Eni said it would start the feasibility studies to "accelerate the exploitation of these new resources" after finalizing the discovery evaluation. In other economic news, Egypts Agriculture Ministry said on Wednesday it would grow about 1.1 million acres of rice in the 2019 season, up from 800,000 acres last year, in an effort to reduce the countrys import bill. The country began importing rice, a crop it typically had in surplus, in 2018 to save water. Cairo increased fines for illegal rice cultivation last year and decreed that just 724,000 feddans could be planted. A feddan is roughly one acre. That marked a sharp drop from the officially allotted 1.1 million feddans for 2017 and the 1.8 million feddans grains traders believe were actually grown that year.