Dana Gas 9-month payments climb 16.7% to $230 million

The Sharjah based firm receives payments from its operations in Egypt, UAE and KRI

A Dana Gas facility in Kurdistan. The company is looking to focus more on its Kurdish operations following sale of Egyptian assets. WAM

Sharjah based Dana Gas’s payments from operations in Egypt, UAE and from its share of Pearl Petroleum Company Limited’s sales in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), rose 16.7 per cent in the first nine months of 2019 to $230 million (Dh844m).

Dana Gas, which owns a 35 per cent stake in Pearl Petroleum, saw its share of sales of condensate, LPG and gas in the KRI jump 53 per cent to $118m in the nine-month period from the same period a year earlier, the company said in a statement on Sunday. The company received cash dividends of $68.3m from Pearl Petroleum over this period.

Meanwhile, the collections from Dana Gas Egypt were $105m during the period while collections from the company’s Zora gas field in the UAE stood at $7.3m.

"We are pleased to record higher collections over ... due primarily to an increase in production and regular payments from the government,” Patrick Allman-Ward, chief executive of Dana Gas said in the statement.

“Our overall collections are higher at $230 m, and our strong in-country relationships have continued to benefit our overall business performance. We are committed to operating all our assets to maximise production and value for all our stakeholders.”

Pearl Petroleum is boosting production in the KRI, where 25 per cent of the region’s power needs remain unmet and demand for power is expected to outstrip supply in the medium and long-term. The consortium operates gas fields in the KRI and currently enables power generation of three quarters of the area’s official electricity production. It signed a 20-year gas sale agreement with the Kurdistan Regional Government earlier this year to facilitate the production and sale of an additional 250 million standard cubic feet per day of gas.

Dana Gas’s share of the proved plus probable (2P) hydrocarbon reserves at Pearl Petroleum Khor Mor and Chemchemal Fields in the KRI increased 10 per cent following the recent certification of reserves by its independent external reserves auditor, Gaffney Cline Associates, it said.

Dana Gas’s total share is equivalent to 1,087 million barrels of oil equivalent, up from 990 million barrels of oil equivalent when Gaffney Cline first certified the fields in April 2016.