UAE’s Dana Gas posts $186m net loss for 2018

United Arab Emirates’ Dana Gas posted a net loss of $186m for 2018, it said on Thursday, against a profit of $83m a year before, due to impairments at its Zora gas field in the UAE and other fields in Egypt.

The gas producer reported one-off non-cash impairments of $187m for its Zora field and $59m for its fields in Egypt. Production at Zora is expected to cease this year, it said.

Excluding the impairment, Dana posted a net profit of $64m, up from $5m on a like-for-like basis in 2017.

Dana reached a restructuring agreement with its creditors in May after a protracted legal dispute that began in 2017, when it halted payments on $700m in sukuk, or Islamic bonds, saying the instruments had become unlawful in the UAE.

On Thursday the company said it had completed its sukuk buyback programme, reducing outstanding notes to $399m from $700m. This will save the company $40m annually in financing costs, it said.

The energy producer said in a statement that it had $407m in cash as of the end of December, down from $608m a year earlier.

Dana said it had made its first ever dividend payment of $95m to shareholders in May and plans to increase dividends by 10 per cent this year to 5.5 fils ($0.015) per share.

Dana’s chief executive Patrick Allman-Ward told Reuters this week that it will begin drilling this year in an area it says could become Egypt’s next giant Mediterranean gas field.

Seismic data has pointed to reserves as large as 20 trillion cubic feet, it said.

Read: UAE’s Dana Gas to drill in what could be Egypt’s next mega gas field