The Middle East gas industry is having to wake up to the reality that it increasingly has to explore for gas in hard-to-reach deposits and formations amid rising demands from domestic power, water and petrochemicals sectors.
In addition to this the rise of unconventional gas development from shale in the United State and increasingly Europe is proving to be a potential game changer in shifting the balance of gas production in the world.
These were findings in at the Gas Summit Arabia held in early February in Abu Dhabi. Discussions also lent themselves to the fact that in a very short period of time, these unconventional sources of gas would begin to influence global energy dynamics, supply and demand and geopolitics.
The event, organised by The Energy Exchange and the World Refining Association, also discussed the sour gas situation in the region, with a case study by Mohammad Ahmad Husain, deputy chairman and deputy managing director planning and gas of Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), on the North Kuwait Jurassic Project. He highlighted the main challenges facing KOC in developing this gas field.
“The project is of critical strategic importance for the State of Kuwait for power generation and to reduce reliance on imports,” said Husain. “To achieve this, an aggressive programme is underway to achieve the production of 1 billion cubic feet by 2015 and 2016,” he added.
Husain said that the Jurassic development is very challenging and hard to handle. “Difficult reservoirs, deep wells and the high content of H2S along with tough operations are the main challenges we face with the development of project,” he said. “We have a limited experience and resources in this area,” he revealed.
To develop this project, Husain said that finding a foreign partner will help KOC achieve its target. “The partner should have expertise of similar Jurassic type projects,” he said. “We also expect the partner to transfer technology and to train KOC staff,” he added stressing on the importance of knowledge transfer in this up and coming sector of the industry.
