We excel at unlocking untapped resources by conducting exploration and development programs across numerous regions, some under very challenging environments, and transforming local economies within the MENA region.
Given the challenging and often volatile environments in which we operate, the health, safety, and security of our people remain our highest priority.
Our commitment to protecting employees and communities, preserving the environment, and safeguarding our assets is embedded in our Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) policy. This commitment is implemented through our HSE management system and Emergency Response Plans (ERP), in alignment with OHSAS 18001 guidelines. Across all operations, we foster a robust safety culture.
We promote a collective culture of safety, where every individual is responsible not only for their own well-being but also for the safety of those around them.
Crescent Petroleum places safety at the core of employee training. Our Safety Training Matrix aligns specific training modules with each role, ensuring that every team member understands their responsibilities in maintaining a safe working environment.
We extend safety training workshops to contractors to reduce health and safety incidents across our supply chain. In 2015 alone, over one thousand individual HSE training sessions were conducted at our operations in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). We maintain a comprehensive incident register to document all health and safety events and lessons learned, enabling continuous improvement in our HSE practices.
Our ERP framework is designed to ensure swift and appropriate responses to emergencies. Beyond emergency preparedness, we prioritize the overall health and well-being of our workforce. Crescent Petroleum leads in providing regular health check-ups, counseling, and treatment services to employees, workers, and their families.
Everyone who works on behalf of Crescent Petroleum is responsible for the Health, Safety, Security, and Welfare of our Employees, Joint Venture Employees, and Contractors and for positively contributing to the protection of our Assets; preservation of the Environment; and for making a positive contribution to the Communities where we operate.
We are committed to:
Our commitment to this policy is demonstrated through visible leadership and a proactive performance culture including encouraging our Contractors and Stakeholders to align with its principles.
Majid Jafar, Crescent Petroleum CEO
October 2025
Crescent Petroleum has a strong track record of environmentally responsible project planning and execution. Since its implementation in 2010, our Environmental Aspects Procedure (EAP) has applied the same rigor and transparency to environmental challenges as to business and management decisions. Our goal is to leave a legacy of environmental stewardship in the communities where we operate.
This approach complements our HSE policy, ensuring a systematic framework for environmental management, waste minimization, and pollution prevention and control.
Crescent Petroleum has operated as a regional upstream and midstream oil and gas company for nearly 55 years. Founded in the early 1970s, it was the first independent, privately-owned Middle Eastern petroleum company to acquire, explore, and develop petroleum concessions, and to produce and market crude oil, petroleum products, and natural gas.
Our diverse international operations across varied and often challenging environments have shaped our expertise in two core areas:
Success in the oil and gas sector—particularly in this region—requires more than technical, commercial, and financial strength demands a deep understanding of the cultural and social context in which business is conducted.
Crescent Petroleum combines decades of regional experience with shared cultural values and a steadfast commitment to developing the region’s energy resources. Our proven track record makes us the partner of choice.
Crescent Petroleum has extensive historical experience of conducting exploration programmes across many regions, some under very difficult and challenging environments, including political upheaval and civil war.
Beyond the UAE, Crescent has conducted exploration in Argentina, Egypt, Montenegro, Pakistan, and Yemen, in partnership with global oil companies such as AMOCO (now BP), British Gas, Inpex, Jugopetrol, and Golfo Petrolero. These efforts involved extensive 2D and 3D seismic surveys across deserts, mountains, and offshore terrains.
We bring decades of experience in developing both offshore and onshore fields, notably the Mubarek Field in the UAE and the Khor Mor and Chemchemal Fields in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI).
Crescent has consistently delivered fast-track field development using best-in-class petroleum practices. Our expertise includes managing high-pressure, deep carbonate reservoirs and overcoming complex drilling challenges such as thick salt layers, fracturing, and variable pressure formations.
In the KRI, Crescent and its affiliate Dana Gas signed a Strategic Alliance Protocol with the Kurdistan Regional Government in 2007 to develop the Khor Mor and Chemchemal gas fields. Within 18 months, first gas was delivered to two power plants in Erbil and Chemchemal. Over the past 15 years, the project has provided uninterrupted, affordable energy at scale—fuelling the KRI’s electricity grid and driving significant economic, social, and environmental impact.
In 2018, Crescent Petroleum and Dana Gas celebrated the tenth anniversary of production operations and in 2019 signed a 20-year Gas Sales Agreement with the KRG to enable production and sales of an additional 250 MMSCF/day to boost local electricity generation, significantly expanding current production (“KM250 project”).
In 2022, Crescent Petroleum reported record sales gas production reaching 470 million cubic feet of gas per day (MMscf/d).
In October 2025 Crescent Petroleum and Dana Gas announced the start of commercial gas sales from the KM250 gas expansion project (KM250) at the Khor Mor facility. Delivered eight months ahead of the revised schedule, the KM250 expansion added 250 million standard cubic feet per day (MMscf/d) of new processing capacity, a 50% increase, boosting Khor Mor’s total output to 750 MMscf/d.
The expansion has bolstered power generation and supports industrial growth across the KRI, underpinning the KRG’s Runaki initiative to deliver 24-hour electricity, while improving supply to other regions of Iraq.
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.
Notable achievements include:
A particular area of focus for the long-term growth of Crescent Petroleum’s business is the development, marketing and utilization of natural gas assets in the region.
At a time during mid 80’s when natural gas was widely understood as an undesirable byproduct of oil production, Crescent Petroleum took a contrary long-view of the regional market and invested its resources accordingly, pioneering a number of initiatives that inevitably placed us at the forefront of the region’s integrated long-term gas projects.
In 1985, Crescent Petroleum arranged the first ever commercial, inter-emirate onshore gas supply contract in Sharjah for the UAE Federal Ministry of Electricity and Water and established the first offshore inter-emirate gas supply and sales agreement between Sharjah and Dubai by building a dedicated 92 km offshore pipeline and associated central gas processing facility from its Mubarek Field in Sharjah to land at Jebel Ali in Dubai.
Today, with the new paradigm shift in oil prices, the gas business in the Arabian Gulf is set on a rapid and important growth path, providing a booming market for the gas supplies necessary to fuel power plants, and the rapidly growing sector variety of gas-related industries.
Crescent Petroleum’s pioneering role in the gas market led to the formation of a gas marketing company under the name of Crescent National Gas Corporation (CNGC) ready to implement the UAE
Gas Supply Project before it stalled.
From upstream, through midstream, distribution and transportation and even into downstream gas processing and facilitating gas based industries, we as a local regional company have sought to realize the maximum added-value of locally-produced gas, as opposed to focusing just on exports as many IOCs with little incentive to develop the local economy tend to do. The value addition brought by Crescent’s projects to the economies of UAE and Kurdistan Region of Iraq are elaborated under the “Social Performance and Sustainability” section.
CNGC’s intended purpose was:
Crescent Petroleum continued its pioneering role in 2005 by playing an instrumental role in establishing Dana Gas which trades on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange and is the first publicly listed energy company in the region. At the time, the IPO had a demand of AED 290 billion on a public offering of AED two billon. Crescent Petroleum is the largest shareholder of Dana Gas and this allows us further participation across the full gas and value chain.
In 2007, Dana Gas completed the US$ 1billion acquisition of Toronto Stock Exchange listed Centurion Energy acquiring assets in Egypt, Tunisia and Nigeria. Today, Dana Gas is one of the largest independent gas producers in Egypt thereby expanding Crescent’s footprint into this important North African country.
In 2008, Crescent and Dana Gas established Gas Cities Ltd as a 50-50 joint venture to develop gas-intensive industrial cities in the region in line with our commitment to making our shared energy future more sustainable. The Gas Cities concept involves the clustering of energy-intensive industries, which in turn delivers significant efficiency gains by allowing for the sharing of utilities and infrastructure, all powered with clean natural gas.
Further examples of Crescent Petroleum’s pioneering role in gas commercialization was the Gulf South Asia Gas Project (GUSA). GUSA was a conceptual study launched by Crescent in 1990 as the first workable project for producing, transmitting by pipeline and delivering natural gas from Qatar to Pakistan and eventually other parts of the South Asia.
Social performance & sustainability
Crescent Petroleum is deeply committed to operating in a manner that honors our employees, environment and local communities from which we draw strength.
We have invested in growth and shared prosperity and we are proud of our work in Sharjah, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and Egypt, where we have had a significant impact on the wider economic and energy landscape, as well as the social fabric of the local community. We will continue to partner with educational institutions, non-profit organizations and other private sector entities to help empower the regions youth, ensuring that they have the skills that this region needs now and in the years to come.
Through our various sustainability initiatives, we aim to be aligned with the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Our effort to reduce unemployment, enhance access to education and ensure the transition to energy-efficient gas projects to make energy readily available to all reflect our commitment to the global sustainable agenda.
Apart from contributing to the GDP of the economies we operate in, Crescent Petroleum has always been an active supporter of various philanthropic activities in the region specific to education & arts, promoting and preserving cultural diversity and heritage.
Some notable contributions are: