Dana Gas, Middle East's largest regional private sector natural gas firm, received an additional payment worth $44.3 million from its operations in Egypt. This payment, done on December 29, is made up of an additional $35 million industry payment from the government and $9.3 million from the sale of 157,350 barrels of El Wastani condensate, with both payments in US dollars. Dana Gas has now received two payments worth an equivalent of $55 million in December from the Egyptian government towards overdue receivables. The shipment of El Wastani condensate is the fifth shipment of condensate sales in 2018, resulting in total collections of $54 million from condensate shipments from Egypt in 2018, Dana Gas said. Total receipts from Egypt reached $199 million year-to-date from $164 million in 2017, with an increase of 21 percent. The level of Dana Gas' receivables in Egypt is now at its lowest since 2011, though the firm hopes for further improvement in payments so as to reduce the level to zero as agreed. Patrick Allman-Ward, Dana Gas' CEO, said: "Receiving $55 million in December from the Egyptian government is positive for Dana Gas as it enables us to complete our final preparations to drill our first offshore deep-water exploration well in the Block 6 North El Arish Concession Area early in 2019. This is the first of several high potential prospects in the block. We are encouraged by the government's willingness to make payments against their outstanding receivables before the year-end and we hope this will carry through into 2019 to clear the outstanding balance entirely as per the agreement." The company recently announced that as a result of the ramp-up of production from debottlenecking project in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the completion of the Balsam-8 well in Egypt, its group production reached 70,000 barrels of oil per day (boepd). This represents a 12.4 percent increase compared to the firm's non-month 2018 average of 62,250 boepd, it said. Source: Trade Arabia
