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Kuwait to tender Dorra gas plant before year-end

26 September 2025

 

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State-owned Kuwait Gulf Oil Company (KGOC) is on track to tender its project to develop an onshore gas plant next to the Al-Zour refinery before the end of the year, according to industry sources.

The planned onshore gas processing facility will have the capacity to process up to 632 million cubic feet a day (cf/d) of gas and 88.9 million barrels a day of condensates from the Dorra offshore field, located in Gulf waters in the Saudi-Kuwait Neutral Zone.

In July, MEED reported that KGOC had set the project in motion by launching an early engagement process with contractors for the main engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) tender.

The contract for the front-end engineering and design (feed) was awarded to France-based Technip Energies and has now been completed, sources said.

The proposed facility will receive gas via a pipeline from the Dorra offshore field, which is being developed in a separate project by Al-Khafji Joint Operations (KJO) – a joint venture of KGOC and Saudi Aramco subsidiary Aramco Gulf Operations Company (AGOC).

The KGOC onshore gas processing facility will be located near the Al-Zour refinery, which is owned by another KPC subsidiary, Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries Company (Kipic).

A 700,000-square-metre plot has been allocated next to the Al-Zour refinery for the gas processing facility and discussions about survey work are ongoing. The site will potentially need to be shored, backfilled and dewatered.

Shoring involves installing supporting structures to prevent the ground from collapsing or shifting.

Backfilling involves filling holes or voids on the site to provide stability, while dewatering is the process of removing excess water from the site.

The planned onshore gas processing plant will also supply surplus gas to KPC’s upstream business, Kuwait Oil Company (KOC).

Dorra offshore gas field

The Dorra gas field was discovered in 1965 and is estimated to hold 20 trillion cubic metres of gas and 310 million barrels of oil.

MEED reported in September 2023 that Aramco and KPC had selected Technip Energies to carry out pre-feed and feed work on the Dorra offshore field development project.

The original feed work for a project to develop the field was performed more than a decade ago; however, changes in technology required the engineering design to be updated before the project could reach a final investment decision.

Since the discovery of the field, a geopolitical tussle over ownership of the asset has hampered its development.

Iran, which calls the field Arash, claims that it partially extends into its territory and that Tehran should be a stakeholder in any development project.

Kuwait and Saudi Arabia maintain that the Dorra field lies entirely in the waters of their shared territory, known as the Neutral Zone or Divided Zone, and that Iran has no legal basis for its claim.

In February 2024, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia reiterated their claim over the Dorra field in a joint statement issued during an official meeting between Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud in Riyadh.

https://image.digitalinsightresearch.in/uploads/NewsArticle/14747184/main.jpg
Wil Crisp

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