Production from Khor Mor, Iraq’s largest non-associated gasfield, has reached 500 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe), its operators have said.
The Khor Mor plant, in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), hit daily production of 525 million standard cubic feet of natural gas in early March, Dana Gas and Crescent Petroleum said in a joint statement on Thursday.
Dana Gas and Crescent Petroleum have a 35 per cent stake each in the Pearl Petroleum consortium, the operator of Khor Mor.
An expansion project, aimed at boosting production at Khor Mor by a further 50 per cent, will now be completed in the first quarter of 2026 instead of the second quarter, the companies said.
The project, estimated to cost $1 billion, was originally scheduled to be completed in the second half of 2024.
“Progress … has advanced in recent months through fast-track simultaneous project construction and commissioning activities, enabling the company to cut the overall project schedule by several months,” the companies said.
The Khor Mor plant provides the fuel for about 75 per cent of the KRI’s electricity generation.
“The KM-250 completion which we are now confident of accelerating to take place in Q1 2026 will transform our business, enabling the next major phase of expansion,” said Richard Hall, chief executive of Dana Gas.
Pearl Petroleum partners will invest $160 million to develop the Chemchemal field, aiming to start producing up to 71 million standard cubic feet of gas per day in 2026. The plan includes drilling three wells, setting up a testing facility and building supporting infrastructure.
Iraq, Opec’s second-largest producer, is looking to boost domestic output of natural gas to support power generation and reduce reliance on imports from countries such as Iran.
Most of Iraq's gas is associated with its large southern oilfields, while independent gasfields such as Akkas in the west and Mansouriya in the east remain largely undeveloped. Similarly, although the KRI has many gasfields, most are still untapped.
KRI holds more than 25 trillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves, accounting for about 20 per cent of Iraq’s total.
Set up in 2005, Dana Gas has exploration and production assets in Egypt, the Iraqi Kurdish region and the UAE, with proven reserves exceeding one billion barrels of oil equivalent and average production of about 60,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day last year.