Dana Gas, the Middle East’s largest regional private sector natural gas company, has received a one-off $42mn (AED 154mn) dividend payment from Pearl Petroleum Company Limited (‘Pearl Petroleum’) in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (“KRI”).
The payment has been distributed as a dividend by Pearl Petroleum (35% ownership by Dana Gas). The payment follows the release of an additional $120mn out of the $400mn that was paid by the Kurdistan Regional Government (“KRG”) to the consortium under a Settlement Agreement reached in August 2017 and that was held in a Pearl Petroleum bank account pending financing for the expansion of the Khor Mor field.
The latest dividend payment which comes in addition to the regular dividends from operational cash flows brings the total dividends received by Dana Gas from the KRI in the year to date to $121mn (AED 443mn) in line with 2018 dividends.
Dr Patrick Allman-Ward, CEO, Dana Gas, commented: “Collecting the payments from sales of gas and liquids on time and receiving these dividends provides us and our Partners with the confidence to push forward with our expansion plans. We hope to soon move forward with the construction phase for the next 250 MMscf/d gas train. This will raise production by over 60% when fully operational in 2022, and is expected to add between $175mn and $200mn annually to our top line. It will also further boost local power generation capacity.”
