Monday, December 31, 2018

Dana Gas receives additional $44m payment from Egypt - ARABIAN BUSINESS

Mon 31 Dec 2018 08:28 AM

Total payments from Egypt $88m in Q4 and $199m year to date

Dana Gas, UAE-based natural gas company, received an additional overdue payment of $44.3 million (AED 162.4m) from its operations in Egypt this week.

This payment is made up of an additional $35 million industry payment from the government and $9.3 million from the sale of 157,350 barrels of El Wastani condensate.

Dana Gas said it has now received two payments worth $55 million (AED 202m) in December from the Egyptian government towards overdue receivables.

The shipment of El Wastani condensate is the fifth shipment of condensate sales in 2018, resulting in total collections of $54million from condensate shipments from Egypt in 2018.

Total receipts from Egypt has reached $199 million (AED 729m) year to date compared to $164 million (AED 600m) in 2017, an increase of 21% year-on-year.

While the level of Dana Gas' receivables in Egypt are now at its lowest since 2011, it said it's hoping for further improvement in payments that will reduce the level to zero as agreed.

“Receiving $55 million in December from the Egyptian government is positive for Dana Gas as it enables us to complete our final preparations to drill our first offshore deepwater exploration well in the Block 6 North El Arish Concession Area early in 2019," said Dr Patrick Allman-Ward, CEO, Dana Gas.

"This is the first of several high potential prospects in the block. We are encouraged by the government’s willingness to make payments against their outstanding receivables before the year-end and we hope this will carry through into 2019 to clear the outstanding balance entirely as per the agreement,” he added.

Dana Gas recently announced that as a result of the ramp up of production from debottlenecking project in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the completion of the Balsam8 well in Egypt, its group production reached 70,000 barrels of oil per day (boepd). This represents a 12.4% increase compared to the its 9m 2018 average of 62,250 boepd.

SOURCE