Dana Gas, the UAE-based privately-owned natural gas company, has announced that it has begun producing commercial gas from the Zora Gas Field in Sharjah.
The Sharjah-based company said initial project startup was achieved on January 14, with early gas supplies being intermittent as the gas plant was being fully commissioned.
Subsequently sales gas production – which started from February 28 – was delayed due to urgent maintenance work on gas supply infrastructure at the customer’s receiving facilities.
“Zora is our first development project in the U.A.E, and as such, represents a significant milestone in the company’s ten year history,” Dr. Patrick Allman-Ward, CEO of Dana Gas was quoted in a press release as saying.
“The project represents a considerable investment by Dana Gas and the resulting gas output will support clean, domestic power generation for Sharjah for years to come,” Allman-Ward said.
The Zora offshore gas field is located in the Sharjah Western Offshore Concession, approximately 35km off the coasts of Sharjah and Ajman in the UAE. The Concession covers a total area of over 1000 sqkm straddling the maritime waters of Sharjah and Ajman.
Dana Gas is the operator with a 100% interest, and will manage the field and the gas sales and purchase agreements. The gas is being transported through a subsea pipeline to a newly built onshore gas processing facility constructed by Dana Gas and located in the Hamriyah Free zone in Sharjah.
The field is expected to achieve a flow rate of 40mn cubic feet of gas a day or 6,650 barrels of oil equivalent. Natural gas from the Zora field will be sold for use in power generation in the domestic market, ‘thus delivering a clean source of energy to the Emirate of Sharjah, as well as cost savings from displacing part of the current sources, which include diesel fuel’, the company says in its statement.
The project has also achieved a safety record of over 2mn man-hours without lost time incidents.
