Kuwait should buy natural gas assets -report

Kuwait should buy natural gas assets -report

Senior advisor says Kuwait should consider buying gas co.

August 16, 2010 10:58 by Reuters

Kuwait should consider buying a company that owns natural gas concessions to help it deal with growing demand for the resource, a senior advisor in the ruler’s office said in remarks published on Monday.

The OPEC member pumps around 1 billion cubic feet per day (cfd) of gas from oilfields and 145 million cfd from gas fields not associated with oil. But this is not enough to meet growing power demands and the country is plugging the gap with imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

“Importing gas has financial and environmental benefits in the short term,” Sheikh Khalifa al-Nasser al-Sabah told al-Seyassah daily in an interview. He heads a research unit in the office of the emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah.

“However, in medium and long terms, buying a medium-sized company that owns gas assets and concessions through the (state-owned) Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company, would serve Kuwait … more comprehensively, economically and security-wise,” Sheikh Khalifa said, without elaborating.

Kuwait plans to produce more than 4 billion cubic feet per day (cfd) of gas by 2030. Like its oil exporting neighbours, it has been slow to develop its gas reserves to meet domestic demand.

(Reporting by Diana Elias; editing by Keiron Henderson)