Dana Gas, Crescent Petroleum Create JV

Gas Cities LLC, a joint venture between Dana Gas PJSC and its partner Crescent Petroleum, announced yesterday that the 461 million square foot site for the Kurdistan Gas City has been officially assigned by the Kurdistan Regional Government, Khaleej Times reports.

The groundbreaking ceremony of the Kurdistan Gas City will take place on September 21, 2008 in the presence of the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, Nechirvan Barzani, and several Ministers, dignitaries and heads of prospective local as well as international industry leaders.

The Kurdistan Gas City is a major new sustainable and synergistic gas-utilisation industrial complex to be built over an area of 461 million square feet. It is designed to promote private sector investment in a variety of gas-related industries to further benefit the country's citizens through mass training, job creation in the many tens of thousands, and the promotion of general economic activity.

The Kurdistan Gas City will include industrial, residential and commercial components in an integrated city, with an expected initial investment in the basic infrastructure estimated at $3 billion, preparing the land for possession by prospective residents. This initial investment will in turn facilitate further Foreign Direct Investment exceeding $40 billion (Dh147 billion) during the operations phase. The Gas City is being structured to hold over 20 varieties of world scale petrochemical and heavy manufacturing plants, and hundreds of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), served by state-of-the art civic facilities.