LONDON - British oil and gas producer Dana Petroleum said yesterday it made a second gas find off the Egyptian coast and was encouraged ahead of deeper drilling in a nearby larger prospect in the coming weeks. The FTSE 250 company said that the discovery was made in the West El Burullus concession in the offshore Nile Delta, a concession and discovery area jointly owned with GDF Suez. Well flow rates from the latest discovery at the Papyrus-1X well, which followed a previous find at the neighbouring WEB-1X well, were up to 33 million standard cubic feet per day with 442 barrels of condensate a day. "The Papyrus discovery reinforces the attractiveness of other prospects already identified within the West El Burullus concession, including larger targets at the deeper Miocene and Oligocene levels," said Dana's chief executive Tom Cross, adding that the company would move on to drill the deeper and larger Bamboo structure in the coming weeks. Dana said it would now analyse the commerciality of the two discoveries, adding that together with its partner it was evaluating their combined early development.
