Dana Gas and Crescent Petroleum's Pearl Petroleum Prices $500M Bond at 10.375%

Pearl Petroleum, the gas venture run jointly by Dana Gas and Crescent Petroleum, has placed a $500 million senior secured bond carrying a 10.375% annual coupon that matures in November 2031. The two shareholders disclosed the placement to the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange on Wednesday.

Subscription demand reached 1.7 times the amount on offer, which let Pearl Petroleum lift the size of the deal from an initial $400 million. Institutional investors from the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, the Middle East and Asia took part.

Most of the proceeds will retire an existing $350 million senior secured bond. The rest will establish the debt service reserves the financing requires, cover general corporate purposes and support further work at the Khor Mor and Chemchemal gas fields.

Richard Hall, Dana Gas's chief executive, said the financing gives the company flexibility to refinance its existing debt and to back future development. Majid Jafar, chief executive of Crescent Petroleum and managing director of Dana Gas's board, restated the consortium's plans to develop its Iraqi gas fields.

The raise lands at a moment when the fields can process more gas than before, yet turning that capacity into revenue has grown harder. The Khor Mor 250 expansion was completed in October 2025 and raised processing capacity at Khor Mor by 50% to 750 MMscf/d. Security-related disruption then constrained utilisation of that capacity and limited its contribution to revenue in the first half of 2026.

Dana Gas also booked a one-off $48 million (AED 176 million) gas metering adjustment in the first quarter of 2026, covering Khor Mor volumes supplied between November 2018 and March 2024 that had not previously been invoiced or paid.

At Chemchemal, Pearl Petroleum continued a $160 million appraisal and early development programme through the first half. Long-term agreements supply up to 142 MMscf/d of gas to industrial customers in Iraq's Kurdistan Region.

Pearl Petroleum was set up in 2009. Dana Gas and Crescent Petroleum hold 35% each, while OMV, MOL and RWE hold 10% each. Cumulative investment in its infrastructure and operations has reached $4 billion, and its gas covers about 80% of electricity generation in the Kurdistan Region.

Dana Gas, which operates in Egypt and the Kurdistan Region, reported average group production of 52,900 boepd in the first half of 2026, against 52,750 boepd a year earlier. Khor Mor resumed operations after precautionary measures during renewed regional tensions in July, and deliveries to Iraq's Ministry of Electricity began under an initial one-year agreement supplying 100 MMscf/d to the Kirkuk Taza power station.