Kuwait Allocates More Than $3 Bn for LNG Project

The Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) has sanctioned one billion Kuwaiti Dinar ($3.3 bn) for an LNG project, Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reported Sunday.

Implementation of the project is to start by end of 2015, Hatem Al-Awadi, Deputy CEO for Projects at the KNPC, told reporters on the sidelines of Kuwait's Third Enterprise Risk Management conference.

According to EIA, Kuwait has increased the share of natural gas in its primary energy consumption from 34 percent in 2009 to 42 percent in 2012, while the remaining share, consisting solely of petroleum and other liquids, has declined.

Kuwait began importing LNG in 2009 through a floating terminal at Mina al‑Ahmadi, to meet rising gas demand, mostly for power and water desalination.

According to KNPC website, it plans to provide long term facilities such as LNG receiving, re-gassation and storage tanks for receiving supplies of the fuel to supply feed to the power generation plants in the country during period of peak electricity demand.

Last year in March, Foster Wheeler AG was awarded the pre-front-end engineering design and the front-end engineering design contract by KNPC for a new onshore LNG import and regasification terminal.

The new terminal will have a design send-out capacity of approximately 1,500 million standard cubic feet per day (MMscf/d) of gas, with four full-containment LNG storage tanks, each of 180,000 cubic meters. The design will also allow for future expansion(s) up to 3,000 MMscf/d and the installation of a further four LNG storage tanks of the same capacity as the initial four tanks.

KNPC plans to start commercial operation of the terminal in 2020, Foster Wheeler said last year.