Home Industry Energy Kuwait opens first permanent LNG facility as it looks to boost gas imports The Al Zour LNG terminal received its first cargo of gas, from Qatar, on Monday by Bloomberg July 14, 2021 Kuwait has opened its first permanent facility to import liquefied natural gas, as Gulf states accelerate efforts to wean their power plants off crude and use cleaner forms of energy. The Al Zour LNG terminal received its first cargo of gas, from Qatar, on Monday, according to state news agency KUNA. The plant, roughly 10 miles from Kuwait’s border with Saudi Arabia, is designed to import as much as 22 million tons of the super-chilled gas each year, making it easily the largest of its kind in the Middle East. “Gas demand in Kuwait is set to rise in the power sector due to the planned phase-out of oil plants worth 10 gigawatts,” Abhishek Rohatgi, an LNG analyst at BloombergNEF, said in a note. “Gas-demand growth is likely to outpace domestic production growth from the Jurassic fields, raising LNG imports.” BloombergNEF expects LNG use in the Middle East to increase almost 50 per cent by 2025, with most of the increase coming from Kuwait. Several of its neighbours are also trying to phase out oil from their power markets. Saudi Arabia aims to stop burning as much as 1 million barrels a day of crude in its electricity plants by 2030, instead using solar, wind and natural gas. Iraq is spending billions of dollars to ramp up gas output. The Gulf Arab economies are among the world’s biggest oil consumers on a per capita basis, in part because of the heavy use of crude in their electricity grids. Kuwait, one of OPEC’s largest oil producers, needs to buy LNG from abroad since it pumps little gas of its own. The crude diverted from power plants will probably be exported. The country has a 15-year contract with state-owned Qatar Petroleum to buy 3 million tons of LNG a year for Al Zour. It plans to buy another 3.5 million tons a year from other suppliers. Until now, Kuwait has mostly imported LNG via floating storage and re-gasification units. Tags Al Zour LNG terminal energy gas Imports Kuwait LNG oil 0 Comments You might also like ADNOC, PETRONAS finalise 15-Year LNG sales deal for Ruwais Project OPEC+ delays oil output hike until April, extends cuts into 2026 Saudi Aramco, Linde and SLB to set up CCS hub in Jubail Saudi Arabia signs solar deals with France’s TotalEnergies, EDF