Kuwait’s leading petrochemical players reveal fears that gas-fuelled power projects will sap them of their ethane feedstocks.
Fears over intensifying competition from heavy industry and the power generating sectors are rife among Kuwait’s petrochemical elite.
Leading industry figures have expressed concern that the country’s rapidly expanding natural gas demands from other industries and utilities will put a squeeze on future ethane availability.
Speaking at a downstream round table in Kuwait City last month, petrochemical experts including Hamad Al Terkait, CEO of Equate Petrochemical, said that the future of Kuwait’s domestic petrochemicals industry needs to be safeguarded by government.
He stressed that guarantees of feedstock and finance were crucial to the sector’s future growth.
The petrochemical industry in Kuwait rakes in over 80% of the nation’s non-oil revenues.
Al Terkait urged the government to boost investment in the industry, and to look for other sources for power generation to protect ethane gas stocks. Experts at the round table said that proposed power projects alone will need 5 billion cubic feet of ethane gas by 2020.
