London: Dana Gas PJSC bondholders, including BlackRock Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group, submitted to a proposal to the Middle Eastern energy producer to resolve a dispute over $700 million sukuk that shocked the Islamic finance industry this year.
The Sharjah, United Arab Emirates-based Dana Gas is seeking to restructure debt for the second time in five years as it struggles to recover payments from Egypt and Iraq’s Kurdish region. After announcing in June that its own facilities don’t comply with Sharia, the company offered to replace two outstanding sukuk with four-year bonds that pay less than half the current average 8 per cent profit rate.
But it retracted that proposal on July 31, the day it missed a profit payment on its sukuk, in favour a court settlement.
The Kurdistan Regional Government last month agreed to pay Dana Gas and its partners in Pearl Petroleum $600 million over delays at a natural gas project, plus a further $400 million to invest in development of fields in the region. The deal ends an arbitration process that lasted almost four years.
