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The Ministry of Oil organizes a virtual seminar on the Kuwait LNG project

24-08-2021

Today, Tuesday, the Public Relations Department of the Ministry of Oil organized a virtual discussion session on the Kuwait Liquefied Gas Project, in which the Senior Planning Engineer in the Liquefied Gas Operations Group at the Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries Company (KIPIC) Abdulaziz Jamal Al-Baijan, and Senior Engineer in Manufacturing in the Projects Group lectured Abdullah Rashid, the project coordination engineer in the Major Gas Import Projects Group, Salman Hisham Al Mazeedi, and a large number of specialists in technical and economic affairs in the Ministry of Oil, the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, OAPEC, the Ministry of Electricity and Water and the Authority participated in it. General environment and media. At the beginning, Abdulaziz Al-Baijan said that the Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries Company (KIPIC) is one of the most important companies of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, and it is responsible for designing, implementing and operating several huge development projects in different and integrated fields such as gas, refineries and petrochemicals. Al-Zour Refinery, including the integrated petrochemical project with Al-Zour Refinery, for which preliminary engineering studies have been completed, as well as facilities for importing liquefied natural gas, which have been completed and operated. During his presentation during the panel discussion, Al-Baijan addressed the importance of liquefied natural gas, its future and its importance at the global level, as he said that it is natural gas that has been treated and liquefied by cooling, where the gas is extracted from oil and gas fields and then transported through special pipes to the treatment facility, where additional processing, cooling and liquefaction operations take place. The gas is under atmospheric conditions, and it is stored in liquid form at a temperature of about minus 160 degrees Celsius. He stated that natural gas is distinguished by its balanced price, lower emissions, non-toxic, sulfur-free and non-carcinogenic. He said that one LNG tanker is enough to supply 70,000 homes with energy for a full year, and by the year 2040, natural gas will be a source of energy for about 25% of the world's electricity, 10% of shipping and 5% of transportation, and the demand for Natural gas in the chemical industries will increase by 30%, according to ExxonMobil research. local market needs For his part, Salman Al Mazeedi said that the permanent gas facilities project in Al-Zour comes in implementation of the directives of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation to establish facilities to receive and re-evaporate liquefied natural gas permanently, within the framework of achieving the strategic plan of KPC 2030 to meet the local market’s long-term needs for fuel and increase flexibility. Operations to meet the seasonal demand for fuel for power plants at peak times during the summer. He said that on March 30, 2016, Kuwait contracted with an alliance consisting of 3 specialized companies, Hyundai Engineering Co., Ltd., Hyundai Engineering and Construction and the Korea Gas Authority, to implement the project at a total cost of about $2.93 billion, noting that the project is expected to be completed permanently. In March 2022. He stated that the project includes the development of land in the sea and the construction of reservoirs and facilities for receiving and evaporating liquefied natural gas with a capacity of 3000 billion British thermal units / day of natural gas to supply it to the local network. The project to import liquefied gas is considered the largest project in the world in terms of tank capacity, as it contains 8 giant tanks, and is the first permanent facilities in the State of Kuwait. He said that the project is also distinguished in terms of the ability to export liquefied natural gas, as the station is designed to export gas at a rate of 1700-5667 cubic meters / hour, noting that the tanks in the project are designed to store gas for 12 days of consumption without any supply operations, and the project also enjoys That it has the ability to send natural gas to the consumer network of the Ministry of Electricity and Water when one or two LNG ships are unloaded. Challenges faced by the project In turn, Eng. Abdullah Rashid reviewed the challenges that faced the project in light of the new Corona pandemic, as he said that the total, partial and regional bans in Kuwait reflected negatively on the implementation stages, as well as the closure of international airports and the outbreak of the epidemic among the contractor’s workers and the injury of workers in various global factories, which led to the closure of some of them and the suspension of Issuing work visas in Kuwait and banning entry to citizens of 34 countries from entering Kuwait. He said that the "Quebec" company has taken a set of steps to confront "Corona", as it has established isolation centers inside the workers' housing, as well as allocating rooms for isolation on the project's land, and coordinating with the Supreme Committee to Combat Corona to facilitate the process of the contractor's labor states and developing a plan with the contractor to avoid any delays on the progress of the work. Project completion. On the operation strategy and future opportunities for the project, he said that KIPIC hired a global contractor, where it signed an operation and maintenance contract for a period of 5 years, in order to use the diverse expertise and transfer it to Kuwaiti engineers and operators, provided that the Kuwaitiization rate of the contractor reaches 60% for various specialties, adding: Strategies to control and rationalize operational costs by allowing local companies to participate in maintenance operations. He pointed out that the project provides promising opportunities worthy of study for the oil and gas industry in Kuwait, as well as opportunities for the local market in the possibility of exploiting cold energy resulting from liquefied gas operations, for example: extracting hydrogen gas from liquefied gas for use in oil refineries, exploiting liquefied gas in exchange operations. Thermal and cooling equipment, equipping cold stores near the project facilities for use in multiple purposes. The project also holds very great opportunities represented in the possibility of exporting natural gas from Kuwait in the future. Instead of receiving gas, Kuwait will achieve a surplus in exporting gas from these facilities, in addition to the fact that the project can rent giant tanks to gas supplying companies. He explained that the power stations in Kuwait are expanding in the use of natural gas instead of burning gas oil, which is more expensive than gas. Regarding the number of gas shipments that were received in the project, he said that the LNG import facility in Al-Zour succeeded in receiving 24 ships with a load of one million cubic feet of liquefied gas, and all of these ships were from Qatargas. extraordinary event For her part, Director of Public Relations and Information at the Ministry of Oil Sheikha Tamader Khaled Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah said that the operation of permanent liquefied natural gas import facilities in the Al-Zour region is an "exceptional event" in the history of the oil sector as it is the first project in Kuwait and the largest in the world in terms of storage capacity, praising the efforts The great who worked on this project for the past years. Sheikha Tamader Khaled Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah stated in her intervention during the virtual seminar that the LNG project meets Kuwait's current and future needs for clean energy, by providing optimal fuel for power plants, especially in the summer and at peak times, and for the local market as well. She praised the continuous and permanent coordination between the Ministry of Oil and all fellow oil companies in organizing seminars to review the most important projects implemented by Kuwait to develop the oil industry, especially coordination with the Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries Company (KIPIC) in reviewing the liquefied gas project, expressing her hope that the completion of the project. All the projects that the oil sector is working on soon to add value to the Kuwaiti economy within the country's vision (New Kuwait 2035).