Saudi Arabia plans regional gas grid to connect with UAE, Oman, Kuwait
Kingdom’s oil minister says Gulf countries to be interconnected in one grid
Abu Dhabi: Saudi Arabia’s energy minister Khalid Al Falih announced on Tuesday plans to develop the country's gas resources and extending a grid to UAE, Oman and Kuwait.
“I am talking to my colleagues in Oman, Kuwait, UAE, about extending a gas grid in the region and we hope to exchange gas and we also have excess of gas which we will be exporting,” he said while speaking at the World Future Energy summit in Abu Dhabi.
“We are already interconnected in electricity. We are working on interconnectivity with Egypt, with Jordan and Iraq but the GCC is well interconnected so will be trading gas, trading electricity as we do already.”
We’ve already exported gas on a commercial basis to the UAE so more of this interconnection in energy is going to take place and, importantly, also in trading of knowhow in technology and development with renewables. We will be doing a lot more of this with in the region, renewables development in cross-borders.
“We’ve already exported gas on a commercial basis to the UAE so more of this interconnection in energy is going to take place and, importantly, also in trading of knowhow in technology and development with renewables. We will be doing a lot more of this with in the region, renewables development in cross-borders.”
Gas imports
UAE currently imports gas from Qatar through Dolphin project and that gas is also exported to Oman through a pipeline.
Al Falih also said Saudi Arabia identified a lot of gas in the kingdom and the country is working to eliminate burning of liquids in utilities by 2030 to enable the kingdom to export more oil.
“As a chairman of Saudi Aramco, I can tell plans to develop the gas and the gas will be backed up by the infrastructure to get it across the country to displace the liquids. We will displace 600,000 barrels or more of liquids — more importantly, we will not allow it to grow.”
Speaking on renewables, he said the country is targeting about 60 gigawatts of the renewables by 2030 and it could go bigger due to the development of technology.