United Arab Emirates-based Dana Gas is celebrating its fourth discovery in Egypt this year, hitting gas with the Tulip-1 well, drilled in the Nile Delta play.

The company said Tulip-1, drilled in the West El Qantara concession, hit pay, adding that the find will add up to 30 billion cubic feet of gas to the company’s reserves base in Egypt.

Tulip-1 follows hard on the heels of the company’s Sondos-1 and -2 dry gas finds and the Azhar-1 gas-condensate discovery.

In a statement, Dana said Tulip-1 lies about 15 kilometres from the South El Manzala gas processing facilities and seven kilometres from the Salma Delta-1 find.

The well was spudded on 25 April and reached a total depth of about 2200 metres.

Tulip-1 hit 11 metres of net pay in a good quality sandstone reservoir of the Abu Madi formation. During production tests, the well flowed 11.4 million cubic feet per day of gas and 318 barrels of condensate per day.

Dana Gas Egypt president, Hany Elsharkawi said a development plan for this discovery is currently being prepared.

“The plan includes the drilling of a number of appraisal and development wells that will support the final assessment of the field and the construction of a new gas and condensate plant to accommodate the production coming from the nearby Salma Delta discovery as well,” he said.

Dana Gas exited 2008 with a production rate from its Egyptian operations of about 31,650 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

This has climbed to about 35,000 boepd due to the tie-in of El Basant field. A further increase is expected in June after the Sondos field tie-in.

The company also plans to invest about 0 million in Egypt and Iraq’s Kurdish region this year to its boost natural gas output.

Last week, the Iraqi government rejected an $8 billion Kurdish plan to supply gas through the Nabucco pipeline to Europe, a major setback to a project in which Dana is a shareholder and which is designed to reduce the continent’s reliance on Russian energy.

(Upstream Online)