Dana Gas, the UAE energy firm, said that its second-quarter net profit jumped 70 per cent as production across the group rose.

Dana made a net profit of Dh169 million ($46.0 million), the company said in a bourse filing. This compares with Dh100 million in the year-earlier period.

Revenues for the second quarter were Dh685 million, up from Dh528 million.

Dana said its average overall production volume was up 17 per cent to 72,200 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the second quarter.

The Sharjah-based energy firm has had problems recovering payment from exploration and production assets in Egypt and Iraq’s region of Kurdistan because of political turmoil in those countries.

Dana reiterated that it had not received any significant payment from Kurdistan since July 2013 and was taking steps to ensure that payments resumed as soon as possible.

Dana expects to recover the vast majority of overdue payments which the Egyptian government owes it by 2018, group chief executive Patrick Allman-Ward said.

The company is putting in place a new arrangement with the government that will permit it to invest in new Egyptian wells and redevelop existing wells, Allman-Ward said on a conference call following the company’s second-quarter earnings.

The new arrangement in Egypt will result in increased production from Dana’s operations there. It will take all the additional condensate production and sell it on the international market, using revenues from those sales to pay down overdue receivables.

“The project will not deliver free cash until the second half of 2016 but thereafter will allow us to reduce the receivables to a nominal value by 2018,” Allman-Ward said.

Dana has had problems recovering payments from exploration and production assets in Egypt and Iraqi Kurdistan because of political turmoil in those places.

At the end of June, the company was owed $297 million in Egypt, up from $274 million at the end of 2013, and $650 million in Kurdistan, up from $515 million, it said.

Dana Gas also said it was expecting a payment by Egypt’s petroleum sector by September but did not provide an exact amount. In Kurdistan, Dana reiterated that it had not received any significant payment since July 2013. The company said in July that a London tribunal had ordered the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to restore previous regular payments as of March 21 until the case is concluded.