In response to Kuwait’s increasing need for electricity, QatarEnergy and Kuwait Petroleum Corporation have inked a 15-year agreement for the delivery of up to 3 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) annually.
According to Sheikh Nawaf Al Sabah, CEO of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, the pact marks the second LNG supply agreement between the two nations, after a similar one in 2020 as part of “efforts to meet rising energy demand in Kuwait,” as reported by the state-run Kuna news agency.
According to a second announcement from QatarEnergy, the contracted LNG quantities will begin to be supplied to Kuwait’s Al-Zour LNG facility in January 2025.
Saad Al Kaabi, the CEO of QatarEnergy and the Minister of State for Energy Affairs of Qatar, said, “I am pleased to be in Kuwait… to build a new long-term partnership between KPC and QatarEnergy, that constitutes a central element in supporting Kuwait’s sustainability goals, particularly in the electricity generation sector.”
Kuwait declared power outages in a few residential areas earlier this month due to ongoing disruptions in fuel delivery.
The power outages were instituted “to maintain the stability of the country’s power grid,” according to the Ministry of Electricity, Water, and Renewable Energy. The ministry also urged locals to use less electricity between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.
As a significant step forward in its efforts to increase its hydrocarbon reserves, Kuwait, the fifth-largest producer of crude oil in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporters (OPEC), said in July that it had found “huge commercial quantities” of both oil and gas. The declaration was made concurrently with the nation’s multibillion-dollar deficit report for the next fiscal year.
During a heatwave in June that saw temperatures reach 51°C Kuwait issued a warning about systematic power outages, severely taxing the country’s electrical infrastructure.
Speaking earlier, Mr Al Kaabi stated that as demand for supercooled fuel rises in Asia and Europe, Qatar would sign additional long-term LNG contracts this year.
There is a great deal of demand, both from Asia and Europe, and I believe even Europe understands that in order to ensure long-term [supply], they need to change now. “They’ve been extremely fortunate to have two mild winters,” he remarked in May at the Qatar Economic Forum.
In February, Qatar declared that it would add 13 per cent more capacity to its already announced expansion. The goal of the initiative is to increase the country’s annual LNG production from its current 77 million tonnes to 142 million tonnes by 2030.
