Like Shipping Gas To Kuwait  

Engineer Live reports that the First major Kuwaiti gas project has been delayed again.

Production from Kuwait's first non-associated gas field has been delayed once again, to early March; meanwhile, the government will renew attempts to push legislation making investor participation possible in the country's Project Kuwait through parliament, writes Middle East energy analyst Samuel Ciszuk.

Gas production from Kuwait's first non-associated gas field will shortly bring 175 mmcf/d of natural gas and 50,000 b/d of light crude and condensates onstream, in the first out of four development phases.

The second phase — which will be launched almost immediately on the completion of the first — is expected to come onstream in 2011 and will raise production to 600 mmcf/d of natural gas and 165,000 b/d of light oil and condensates.

A third stage should bring gas production to 1 bcf/d, and has been revised to allow for 350,000 b/d production of light oil and condensates in 2015 — up from 275,000 b/d in previous plans —and a fourth phase has now been added. This fourth-phase development will aim to take the field's production to 1.5 bcf/d of gas, although according to Agence France Presse (AFP) Hashem Hashem, deputy director of the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), declined to reveal a time-frame for the completion of the final phase.

Meanwhile Turkish Daily News reports that Kuwait is to start importing LNG by ship from Qatar next year as they struggle to produce enough gas to run their power generation facilities.

Kuwait will start importing between 500 million and 750 million cubic feet of LNG daily from Qatar by sea next year, a top oil official said yesterday. "In 2009 we will definitely import LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) by ships which will operate in summer," the chief executive officer of national oil firm Kuwait Petroleum Corp. (KPC) Saad al-Shuwaib said.

Import facilities will be ready by the end of the year, Shuwaib told a two-day conference organized by MEED magazine. He said most of the imports will be used to supply power and water desalination plants when demand rises sharply during the summer months in the desert state. The two Gulf states had been planning to have the gas piped through Saudi Arabia but the kingdom refused to allow this because of political differences with Qatar.

Kuwait, the fourth largest OPEC producer, is rich in oil but short on natural gas despite a huge discovery in 2006. The emirate currently produces around one billion cubic feet of associated natural gas, but that amount is insufficient to meet increased demand for power plants and water desalination. Kuwait in March 2006 announced the discovery for the first time of 35 trillion cubic feet (one trillion cubic meters) of free natural gas and about 10 billion barrels of light oil in its northern oilfields.

AFP reports that Kuwait is to spend $51 bln on oil development - increasing oil output to 4 million bpd (apparently Burgan isn't as far in decline as some people fear, or they have a lot more where that came from) and building new refineries.

he Gulf state of Kuwait plans to spend 51 billion dollars over the next five years to upgrade its vital energy sector which generates 95 percent of its revenue, a top oil executive said Monday. "We plan projects worth 51 billion dollars for upstream and downstream projects in the oil sector... up until early 2013," said Saad al-Shuwaib, chief executive officer of national conglomerate Kuwait Petroleum Corp (KPC).

The projects include raising Kuwait's oil output capacity from 2.7 million barrels per day (bpd) to four million bpd by 2020, besides building a large refinery and upgrading existing refineries, he said. ...

Conference speakers attributed the increase to a surge in the cost of projects in general and the energy sector in particular over the past five years as a result of the spike in crude prices, which hit 100 dollars a barrel earlier this year. The oil output expansion involves the controversial Kuwait Project which seeks the assistance of international oil companies to develop the nation's northern oilfields, Shuwaib said.

The estimated 8.5 billion dollar project aims to double production to 900,000 bpd from four oilfields but has been stalled for more than a decade by the opposition-controlled parliament. Shuwaib said KPC plans to expand its exploration of untapped areas in Kuwait, which is the fourth largest OPEC producer and sits on about 10 percent of global crude reserves. Current output is pumps around 2.5 million bpd. "So far, we have only been working on less than one-third of Kuwait's total area. Now, we plan to start exploration and drilling in other areas," he said.