Dana Petroleum staff evacuated from Egypt

SCOTTISH oil company Dana Petroleum is managing its Egyptian business remotely from an office near its headquarters in Aberdeen after evacuating eight non-Egyptian managers in the wake of the ousting of president Mohamed Mursi.

Just a small team of expatriate employees, led by managing director for Egypt Paul Barnett, remains in the country.

The move comes as managers at Dana, led by chief executive and former BP executive Marcus Richards, prepare to shop around for new investments to reshape the business whose interests stretch from the Norwegian North Sea to Cameroon.

Dana has been handed $5 billion (£3.3bn) by its state-owned parent Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC) to invest in existing sites and has a $900 million loan facility to acquire new assets.

A Dana spokesman said: "Dana's primary concern is always the safety and wellbeing of our employees.

"Following recent developments in Egypt we put long-standing plans into action to move eight of our expatriate staff and their families out of Cairo to Aberdeen as a precaution.

"From this safe location they are now able to help run the business remotely. Plans are also in place to secure the safety of our local Egyptian employees should the situation worsen."

Dana is not the only foreign oil company to have removed foreign staff from Egypt. BP said earlier this month it had withdrawn about 60 people, leaving only 40 essential expatriate workers in the country.

BG Group, which usually has about 150 non-Egyptian staff and dependants in Egypt, said it had withdrawn about 100 people.