Why Gulf economies are doubling down on natural gas exploration

Sebastian Castelier

Jul 16, 2024

An employee of the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) looks on Jan. 25, 2005, the Gathering Center No.1 5 of al-Rawdatain field, 100 kilometers north of Kuwait City. — An employee of the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) looks on Jan. 25, 2005, at the Gathering Center No. 15 of al-Rawdatain field, 100 kilometers north of Kuwait City. — YASSER AL-ZAYYAT/AFP via Getty Images

This is an excerpt from the Gulf Briefing, Al-Monitor's weekly newsletter covering the big stories of the week across the Gulf. To get it directly to your inbox, sign up here.

DUBAI — Kuwait Oil Company announced on Sunday that it has discovered “huge commercial amounts of light oil and associated gas” in an offshore field. Associated gas is natural gas that is found in oil deposits. According to preliminary estimates, the Al-Nokhatha field may hold some 5.1 trillion standard cubic feet of gas, or 3.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent, KOC said.

Other Gulf countries are also doubling down on exploration activity to extract more gas from the ground. This month, Saudi Arabia’s fossil fuels company, Saudi Aramco, announced the discovery of two natural gas fields and two natural gas reservoirs in the Empty Quarter region. Sharjah, one of the United Arab Emirates’ seven emirates, said its oil corporation found new gas reserves in the Al-Hadiba field in May. Oman plans to auction more exploration licenses for offshore oil and gas blocks, and Bahrain discovered gas reserves in the Al-Joubah and Al-Jawf reservoirs in 2022.

Despite an agreement signed by delegates at the COP28 summit in Dubai in December 2023 that, according to the United Nations, signaled the “beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era, the momentum for increasing the production of gas, a fossil fuel, is strong in the Gulf region.