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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The UAE-based Dana Gas will have the capacity to meet the whole Kurdistan Region’s demand for gas in about two years as part of its plan to expand the Region’s fields in Sulaimani province, an official from the company said on Thursday. However, the gas giant said on Monday that it was temporarily suspending this expansion project after it was hit with rockets three times in less than a week.
Crescent Petroleum and its affiliate, Dana Gas, reached an agreement with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in 2007 to develop the Region’s substantial gas resources. They also agreed to establish Kurdistan Gas City to promote private sector investment. Dana Gas has developed its production capacity gradually to 450 standard cubic feet per day.
An official from the company said on Thursday that it plans to more than double its production capacity in the next two years to meet the full demand of the Region for gas but the expansion project, based in Sulaimani province’s Chamchamal district, was attacked with rockets three times in four days late last month. Although the attacks did not cause casualties, they made the company temporarily halt the work on the expansion project.
“We are currently producing 450 million standard cubic feet per day of gas which is completely delivered to the KRG and is fully used for power generation and for power stations across the country. This represents more than 75 percent of all the gas that is consumed in Kurdistan,” Mohammad Makkawi, Executive Director for Projects at Dana Gas, said during an online panel hosted by Columbia University's Center for Global Energy Policy.
“We have a project going on right now, being implemented, and it will be completed by April or May of next year. It will add another 250 million standard cubic feet per day of gas - that will make the total production next year 700 million standard cubic feet per day. We also have plans for two other projects, immediately after that. This will bring our production capacity from 700 to 1.05 billion standard cubic feet per day,” he added.
Makkawi also said that they “believe within the next two to two and a half years we will be in a position to produce and meet the gas demand of the whole Kurdistan Region of Iraq and we will be happy to look into exporting our gas to the rest of Iraq - either as gas or if the KRG prefers through power generation in the KRG and exporting power the federal Iraq.”
No group has claimed responsibility for the three attacks. No new attacks have been recorded since more Kurdish security forces were deployed to the field on Saturday when it was last hit.
Qubad Talabani, KRG Deputy Prime Minister, said on Wednesday that they have identified those behind the attacks, adding that they will take measures against them.
The KM250A project is the first stage of a two-train expansion project Khor Mor gas field. Work at the plant resumed in April of last year after it was halted due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The attacks come at a time of intensifying tensions between Baghdad and Erbil over the Kurdistan Region's oil and gas law, which Iraq's top court deemed "unconstitutional" amid growing Kurdish ambitions to export gas.
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