By NNN-WAM
Sharjah : Dana Gas, the Middle East’s first and largest regional private sector natural gas company, has announced that its project in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq to supply, process and transport natural gas to fuel urgently needed local electricity generation is progressing at a rapid pace, with over 70 per cent overall project completion to date.
The project, following service agreements signed in April 2007 with the Kurdistan Regional Government and carried out in partnership with Crescent Petroleum, has completed the engineering, procurement and manufacturing phases, and is now in the construction stage, using Iraqi contractors to maximise local content and economic benefit, the company said Sunday in a press release.
The entire project is on track for the first gas supply of 150 million cu ft of gas per day by middle of this year, rising to 300 million cu ft by early 2009.
The gas will supply new power plants under construction in Erbil and Sulymaniya, to provide 1,250 MW of electricity generation, for the benefit of over four million Iraqi citizens in the Kurdistan Region and the rest of Iraq.
Hamid Jafar, executive chairman of Dana Gas and chairman of the Board of Crescent Petroleum, said the project involves a total investment of USD650 million — the largest single private sector investment in Iraq since 2003.
The project implementation includes upstream development and production, processing with state-of-the-art LPG plants, and transportation of natural gas through a new 180km pipeline, in order to provide urgently-needed gas supplies to cost-effectively fuel the new power stations under construction, providing savings to the Government budget of over USD2 billion annually in fuel costs.
The project implementation will also provide work opportunities for over 2,000 Iraqi nationals of all ethnic groups, and provide comprehensive training in oil and gas operations for Iraqi citizens.
The Protocol agreement includes the “Kurdistan Gas City” — a major new gas-utilization industrial complex to be built over an area of approximately 35 sq km, designed to promote private sector investment in a variety of gas-related industries to further benefit the country’s citizens through training, job creation in the tens of thousands, and the promotion of general economic activity.
The initial feasibility study for the “Kurdistan Gas City” project has now been completed, with final site selection underway.