Dana Gas to resume production at gasfield in Iraqi Kurdistan after drone attack

Company will restart output in a 'phased manner' with new measures to maximise safety of all personnel and facilities

Dana Gas's Khor Mor and Chemchemal fields in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Photo: Dana Gas

Dana Gas, one of the largest private natural gas companies in the Middle East, will gradually resume production from its gas complex in Iraq’s Kurdish region after a drone strike last week.

The company is resuming output in a “phased manner”, with new measures being introduced to maximise the safety of all personnel and facilities, Dana Gas said in a filing to the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange on Wednesday.

Four workers died and eight others were injured when the drone struck a condensate storage tank at the Khor Mor complex on Friday, which Dana Gas described as a “terror attack”.

“Based upon concrete actions which have been taken by the government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government to significantly strengthen defences at the Khor Mor site … Dana Gas and its partners have taken steps to recommence production,” the company said on Wednesday.

Dana Gas did not specify when production would be fully restored and did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Khor Mor, one of the major operating fields in the Sulaymaniyah region of Kurdistan, has been the target of recent similar attacks.

There has been no claim of responsibility for any of the attacks.

The field is being developed by the Pearl Consortium, which is led by Dana Gas and Crescent Petroleum with partners including Austria's OMV, MOL of Hungary and RWE.

Production started in 2008, sending gas to power stations in the cities of Chemchemal, Bazian and Erbil, making the Kurdish region the first to use gas for electricity in Iraq on such a scale.

By 2018, production had risen by 50 per cent to 452 million standard cubic feet per day, from 305 million standard cfd by the end of 2021, together with 15,000 barrels per day of condensate and more than 1,000 tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas.

To date, all of the gas produced by the field has been used for in-country power generation, providing fuel for more than 80 per cent of the Kurdish region of Iraq.