Egypt meets late gas payments to UAE's Dana Gas: Official

Disagreement with Emirati firm over volumes of sold gas causes payment delay, says Egyptian official

Egypt has met all delayed gas payments to UAE's energy firm Dana Gas this month, after resolving issues of gas volume measurements, an Egyptian official told Reuters on Thursday.
In May, Dana's management reported delayed payments of $148 million for gas sales to the Egyptian government and said if these were not met it would impact on its future investments in the country.
"The payment has been made, and the main reason why it was delayed is because we had a minor conflict with Dana over the volumes of gas being produced and sold to us," said an official at state-owned Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS).
He said the conflict was over a difference of 5 million standard cubic feet per day of (mmscfd) gas over a five-month period the government did not want to make payments for.
"Dana then hired a third party to come in and measure the volume of gas being sold to us, and it turned out that our calculations were correct," said the official, who declined to give details on the amount paid to Dana.
Officials from Dana were not available to comment.
Dana Gas has significant investments in Egypt and said it produced 4.25 million barrels of oil equivalent (BoE) in the country during the first-quarter of this year.
On Thursday, the Financial Times newspaper reported that Dana has emerged as one of the possible bid targets for the Vallares investment vehicle.
The newspaper said that Vallare's was understood to be particularly interested in Dana's upstream gas assets in Egypt and Kurdistan.
"We haven't heard anything about Dana selling their assets in Egypt and till this day we are still dealing with them," said the Egyptian official.
Dana Gas officials declined comment.