Dana Gas, the Middle East’s leading private sector and publicly-listed natural gas company, and Crescent Petroleum, the region’s private upstream oil and gas company, have announced the start of commercial gas sales from the KM250 gas expansion project (KM250) at the Khor Mor facility in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI).

Delivered eight months ahead of the revised schedule, the KM250 will add 250 million standard cubic feet per day (MMscf/d) of new processing capacity, a 50 per cent increase, boosting Khor Mor’s total output to 750 MMscf/d.

The additional capacity will help meet Iraq’s rapidly growing power demand by delivering significant new volumes of clean-burning natural gas.

The expansion will bolster power generation and support industrial growth across the KRI, underpinning the KRG’s Runaki initiative to deliver 24-hour electricity, while improving supply to other regions of Iraq.

The $1.1 billion project was backed by financing from the Bank of Sharjah, the US Development Finance Corporation (DFC), and proceeds from Pearl Petroleum’s $350 million senior secured bond issued in 2024 and listed on Nordic Alternative Bond Market.

At its peak, the project employed over 10,000 people and involved the delivery of more than 6,000 tonnes of steel and 6.2 million man-hours, making it one of the largest private-sector infrastructure builds in Iraq in recent years.