3.2 billion barrels! New oil and gas reserves have been discovered in Middle Eastern countries

After Saudi Arabia, another Middle Eastern country has discovered large oil and gas reserves.

According to CCTV news, on July 14 local time, the Kuwait Petroleum Company released news that it found new oil and gas reserves in the Nuhasa oil field near the island of Ferraqa in the eastern sea of Kuwait.

Kuwait Petroleum CEO Nawaf al-Sabah said the newly discovered reserves are spread over an area of about 96 square kilometers, mainly light oil and associated gas, including 2.1 billion barrels of light oil and 5.1 trillion standard cubic feet of natural gas, equivalent to a total of 3.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent (about 457 million tons). That's roughly equivalent to the country's entire oil production in three years.

Kuwait National Petroleum Corporation is the largest oil company in Kuwait. In the fiscal year 2022-2023 (April 2022 to March 2023), the company posted a profit of KWD 1.016 billion (about US $3.322 billion), an increase of 198%. Oil production during the period was 2.8 million barrels per day (about 146 million tons per year).

Kuwait is a major global oil producer. Kuwait ranked 10th in the world in daily oil production last year, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. During the same period, the United States produced 12.9 million barrels of oil per day, ranking first in the world.

The oil and gas industry is the main source of Kuwait's economy, accounting for about 60% of the country's GDP and about 95% of export earnings. Last year, due to the decline in international crude oil prices and the impact of production cuts, Kuwait's GDP fell 5.8% in the third quarter of 2023, and 4.4% in the fourth quarter.

Following a period of sluggish growth, the country's economy is expected to see solid growth in 2025 as the global oil market stabilizes, the expansion of the non-oil sector and the government-driven economic diversification strategy, according to the latest economic Insight report by Kowich National Bank.

Oil is a key development industry in Kuwait. In June last year, Kuwait Petroleum said it would invest 13 billion dinars ($42.5 billion) in oil projects by fiscal 2027-2028 to reach 4 million barrels per day of oil production capacity by 2035.

China and Kuwait have cooperated for a long time. Last year, the two countries signed the Joint Statement on the Five-Year Plan for Bilateral Cooperation (2024-2028) and a number of bilateral cooperation documents in renewable energy, infrastructure construction and environmental governance.

Kuwait is an important source of crude oil imports for China. In the first five months of this year, China imported 6,569,400 tons of crude oil from Kuwait, ranking ninth among import sources.

In the field of oil and gas exploration and development, the two sides have more cooperation.

On July 2, the official micro blog of China Petroleum News announced that the Great Wall Drilling Company, a subsidiary of petrochina, won the "5+1 year" contract for the service of 16 drilling and workover RIGS of Kuwait National Petroleum Company, with a total contract amount of 6.2 billion yuan, setting a record for the highest amount of a single overseas drilling and workover rig for petrochina. It is also the first deep-well drilling rig and deep-well workover rig service contract for petrochina in the high-end market of the Middle East.

The Middle East is one of the regions with the richest oil and gas reserves and production in the world. In early July, Saudi Arabia's energy minister announced that Aramco had discovered seven oil and gas deposits in the country's eastern province and the Rub al-Khali Desert, including two unconventional fields, a light Arabian oil reservoir, two gas fields, and two gas reservoirs.

According to public data, by the end of 2021, the remaining recoverable reserves of oil and natural gas in the Middle East are 113.2 billion tons and 75.8 trillion cubic meters, respectively, accounting for 48.3% and 40.3% of the global total. During the same period, oil and gas production in the Middle East reached 1.316 billion tons and 714.9 billion cubic meters, respectively, accounting for 31.2 percent and 17.7 percent of the global total.

The International Energy Agency recently released its World Energy Investment Report, predicting that energy investment in the Middle East will reach $173 billion in 2024, up 16.1% year on year. Among them, fossil energy investment reached $135 billion, accounting for 78% of the total energy investment in the Middle East, accounting for 33.6% of the global total fossil fuel investment.

The Middle East is also investing in clean energy. According to the report, clean energy investment in the Middle East is expected to reach $27 billion in 2024, up 17.4% year on year, accounting for 15.6% of its total investment.