Nicosia: July 13, 2007 - Dolphin Energy has announced the start of natural gas production from its wells in Qatar offshore North Field. Dolphin's gas is now flowing to its customers in the United Arab Emirates for the very first time.

The commencement of production from the North Field constituted the successful conclusion of the visionary Dolphin project which started nine year ago, aimed at linking the nations of Qatar, the UAE and shortly Oman in a unique regional gas grid.

Dolphin Energy is processing this gas at its brand-new, dedicated Gas Processing Plant in Qatar's Ras Laffan Industrial City - then transporting the refined methane by sub-sea export pipeline, from Qatar to Dolphin's Gas Receiving Facilities at Taweelah in Abu Dhabi.

In Qatar, significant quantities of valuable by-products are also being produced during processing - ethane, condensate, propane, butane.  The ethane is supplied to Qatar Petroleum on long-term contract - the other products are sold on international term and spot markets.

Sheikh Hamdan Bin Zayed Al Nahayan, Deputy Prime Minister of the UAE and Chairman of Dolphin Energy said on the occasion: "This achievement is historic as well as highly important. The entire Dolphin value chain is now functioning, as we have long envisioned and planned. We are therefore managing and supplying our own gas to our contracted customers, controlling every stage of the process. The next challenge is to carefully ramp up our production, until we reach targeted pipeline throughput of 2 billion standard cubic feet per day in early 2008." (ANI)