Dana Gas Strikes Gas in Egypt

Dana Gas PJSC, the Middle East’s first and largest regional private sector natural gas company, has announced a new gas discovery in the Nile Delta, Egypt. The discovery was at West Sama-1 in the West El Qantara Concession.

This new field discovery comes after the first successful drilling in the Komombo Concession earlier in the second quarter of the year. The new discovery is nearby to the Sama-1 and Sama-2 dry gas discoveries in the Abu Madi formation. The evaluated in-place resources for the West Sama-1 are between 4 to 6 Billion Cubic Feet (Bcf).

The company is preparing a development plan for this discovery to be tied in to the nearby pipeline owned by Dana Gas. The West Sama-1 gas discovery will be tied in to the Company’s nearby South El Manzala gas processing plant within a week.

The West Sama-1 well is the first significant dry gas discovery in the Kafr El Sheikh Formation by Dana Gas in 2012 and the twenty third as a result of the aggressive exploration drilling campaign that started in 2007 and will continue throughout 2013.

Mr Rashid Al Jarwan, Dana Gas Executive Director and Acting CEO, said “Our team in Egypt continues to deliver tremendous results. We are delighted that this exploration well has been successful. It builds upon Dana Gas Egypt’s outstanding record of discoveries”. Dr. Patrick Allman-Ward, Dana Gas Egypt General Manager commented, “The well is an excellent start to 2012 drilling in the Nile Delta. We still have a sizeable portfolio of drillable prospects and our exploration activity will continue throughout the year, as will our development activities.”

Dr. Patrick continued: “The discovery at the West Sama-1 well represents a successful Dana Gas strategy of drilling shallow gas discoveries that can quickly help Egypt meet its growing demand for gas. We are delighted that our prospect generation efforts followed by an effective drilling program are continuing to produce positive results, which will boost even further the company’s production starting from this year”.

This new field discovery comes after the announcement of commencement of Dana Gas’ joint-venture, the Egyptian Bahrain Gas Derivatives Company (EBGDCo) NGL extraction plant at Ras Shukheir in Egypt. EBGDCo’s first cargo shipment of propane was achieved on 1st October 2012 signalling scheduled plant production start-up on a commercial basis. When fully operational, the plant will extract 120,000 tonnes per annum of propane & butane from a gas stream of 150 MMscfd.

Dana Gas is an operator in the Nile Delta currently producing gas and associated liquids from 11 fields, and is the 50% operator alongside Sea Dragon Energy and producing oil from one field in Upper Egypt. During 2011, Dana Gas Egypt produced 77.67 billion cubic feet of gas and 2.6 million barrels of liquids.

Dana Gas is currently the 6th highest gas producer in Egypt, a country whose gas reserves has doubled in the past 5 years to over 70 trillion cubic feet, and is among the world’s top ten exporters of LNG. In 2007 Dana Gas made Southern (Upper) Egypt’s historic first ever commercial oil discovery from its first exploration well drilled in the Komombo Concession. The Company is firmly committed to pursuing further investments, in partnership with the national Egyptian companies and other energy companies from the region and internationally.

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LNG World News Staff, October 22, 2012; Image: Dana Gas