Abu Dhabi: Dana Gas, the Sharjah-based oil and gas company, on Sunday announced it has received payments of $48 million (Dh177 million) from its operations in Egypt in June.
The collections comprise $38 million in payments from the government and $10 million from the sale of the second El Wastani condensate shipment in 2019.
“Receiving $38 million from the Egyptian Government in June shows steady progress for the Government in achieving its target of paying all the overdue receivables by year-end,” said Dr Patrick Allman-Ward, CEO of Dana Gas.
“These payments will provide funds to execute our current onshore workover programme and contribute towards the costs of drilling Merak-1, our deepwater exploration well in Block 6. Drilling operations are progressing well and we are expecting to have results in the third quarter this year.”
The payment is part of Egyptian government’s ongoing efforts to reduce Dana Gas’s overdue receivables position to zero by the end of 2019.
In the first half of 2019, the company has received a total of $78 million in payments from Egypt, further reducing the firm’s receivables to $125 million.
Dana Gas is the Middle East’s largest private sector oil and gas company with exploration and production assets in Egypt, Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) and UAE with average production of 63,050 barrels per day in 2018.
Dana Gas commenced drilling operations on May 20, 2019 at its Merak-1 well in Eygpt, which lies in the Eastern Mediterranean (Levantine) Basin where other world-class giant natural gas discoveries have been made in recent years.
The firm, listed on Abu Dhabi bourse reported a 150 per cent increase in net profit in the first quarter of 2019 to $35 million due to an increase in production in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) as well as lower financing costs. Revenue, on the other hand remained flat at $119 million.
