Dana Gas yet to complete design work for Sharjah gas field

10 October 2011

The Sharjah-based firm hopes to start production at the Zora gas field by mid-2012

Sharjah-based Dana Gas has not completed the front end engineering and design (feed) work for the development of emirate’s Zora gas field.

Contractors have also not been given bid deadlines or tender details, according to a source close to the project. This is expected to delay the company’s plans to start production at the field by the third quarter of 2012.

Dana Gas contracted Indonesia’s Tripatra Engineering to undertake feed and long lead procurement work in 2010. In addition, “suitable potential construction contractors will be brought in early on during the design stage for project familiarisation and the best prospect of achieving the earliest start”, the company said in its 2010 annual report.

Contractors that were expecting to receive more details on the project have so far been disappointed. “At the end of September, they said they will give us feed documents, which would be 80 per cent complete, so we can start preparing bid documents. But we haven’t received the documents,” says a source at a contractor.

“I don’t think they are ready, because the feed has to be finished before anything happens,” adds the source. Bid deadlines, or details on how the project will be tendered, have not been announced. Dana Gas has the option of tendering the offshore, the transmission and the onshore packages seperately or as one.

The company was awarded the 25-year concession for the redevelopment of the field by Sharjah’s Petroleum Council in 2008. The scope of the project includes an offshore platform, at least two wells, a 12-inch, 125-kilometre gas and condensates pipeline, and an onshore gas processing plant. The production target for the 1,000 square kilometre reservoir is 50-60 million cubic feet a day.

The company will not have to start its drilling work from scratch. Under the redevelopment, Dana Gas will complete two wells originally drilled by its subsidiary Crescent Petroleum.

Dana Gas did not respond to requests to comment on the project.

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