Marasi 28

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
Dana Gas strives to lead the rapidly growing
natural gas sector in the Middle East
Dana Gas has become the Middle East’s first and largest regional private
sector natural gas Company. It has exploration and production
assets in Egypt, Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) and the UAE, with an
average production output of 67,600 Barrel of oil equivalent per day
in 2017. To know more about the company and how they have reached
this leading position, Marasi News has exclusively met Mr. Patrick
Adrian Allman-Ward, the Director and the CEO of Dana Gas.
By Hudoob Younis
Dana Gas has become the first
and the largest regional private
sector natural gas company in
the Middle East, can you give us
an overview about the company
and how did you reach this leading
position?
The company was established in
2005 with initial public offering,
quoted in Abu Dhabi stock market.
Our first project was to import 600
MMscf gas per day from Iran to
process it and to sell it to our customers
in the Northern Emirates
of the UAE. To give you a sense of
scale this is 10% of the entire UAE
daily gas consumption. However,
the deal wasn’t fulfilled as agreed
and this has lead to a long arbitration
process with NIOC that is still
going on since then. This issue has
encouraged us to shift our business
focus from midstream to upstream
to work in exploration and
production. Thus, we have successfully
purchased assets in Egypt and
today we are producing just under
40,000 Barrels of oil equivalent
per day (boe/d). Moreover, we have
35% shares in the Pearl Petroleum
Limited Company located in KRI.
This company was established in
2007 and is currently developing
vast assets in the largest gas fields
that are located there having 75
trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of in-place
gas volumes and 7 Billions of Barrels
(Bbo). We are still in the first
phase of development and currently
producing around 300 MMscf/d
of gas, 13,000 bpd condensate and
900 MT/d LPG. Dana Gas’ share
of this production is about 25,000
boe/d.
Currently, you are operating in
Egypt, Kurdistan Region of Iraq
and the UAE. Do you have any
expansion plans?
We are constantly looking at further
investment and development
opportunities in the region. However,
we have not been able to find
any more attractive opportunities
so far. Currently, our focus is to expand
our business in these three
countries, particularly in Egypt and
KRI.
In Egypt, we have a number of
interesting exploration blocks that
we are currently working on and
we hope to drill an offshore well
in a material gas prospect in Block
6 early 2019. In KRI, we reached
a settlement agreement with the
government in August 2017. This
agreement gave us the opportunity
to further invest in the country. We
hope that this year we will increase
Mr. Patrick Adrian Allman-Ward
Director and the CEO of Dana Gas
32 MAY - JUNE 2018