The Middle East Energy

While the export of crude oil remains a central part of Kuwait’s economy, in the longer term, the government has targeted economic diversification. The most straightforward way to accomplish this is to use the country’s most lucrative natural asset to produce higher-value petrochemicals and refined products. To that end, the government is looking to...

For many, the passage of the National Development Plan in 2010 heralded an opportunity for Kuwait’s non-energy-related industries to finally come to the fore of the country’s economic development. Indeed, desire to diversify the country’s income stream – around 90% of government revenue over the last 10 years has come from oil receipts – has led to...

As the country’s demand for electricity continues to grow, expanding domestic power generating capacity is an increasingly important issue. While the government has worked to add capacity in recent years – notably, the first phase of the 2000-MW Sabiya power station came on-line in 2011 – more will need to be done to avoid any potential shortfalls...

While many members of the GCC have announced high-profile renewable energy projects in recent years, Kuwait has taken comparatively little action to diversify its energy base so far. Its domestic reserves of oil and natural gas could in theory power the country for the next several hundred years. Existing renewable energy technologies are expensive...

For years the availability of cheap and abundant oil has meant that the development of the country’s natural gas reserves has only recently come to the fore. However, growing demand for power and water generation, environmental concerns, advances in technology and the rising price of oil have combined to make the extraction and processing of this...