State-owned Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries Company (Kipic) is preparing to tender a contract for a reliquification facility at the Al-Zour liquified natural gas (LNG) import terminal, according to the company’s annual plan.The scope of the project will include engineering, procurement, construction, pre-commissioning, commissioning, startup, and performance testing.The facility will reliquefy all of the boil-off gas (BOG) from the terminal and return the reliquefied natural gas to the LNG storage tanks.BOG is the term used to refer to the part of the LNG that evaporates into gas phase during the process of LNG unloading and storage.Some LNG facilities flare off  this gas, which has negative environmental consequences and means that the gas cannot be transported to end users.Reliquefying the BOG means that flaring can be reduced and a larger percentage of the imported gas can be transported to end users.Aside from covering the development of the reliquification facility, the package will also cover associated works at the LNG import terminal.The package is expected to take 20 months to execute and is scheduled to be tendered in December this year.Kuwait’s $2.9bn Al-Zou LNG import terminal received its first cargo of gas from Qatar in July 2021.The terminal, which is operated by Kipic, is located about 16 kilometres from Kuwait’s border with Saudi Arabia and is designed to import as much as 22 million tonnes of the super-chilled gas each year, making it the largest of its kind in the Middle East.It is the country’s first permanent facility to import LNG. Prior to the facility starting operations, Kuwait mostly imported LNG via floating storage and regasification units.Kuwait, one of Opec’s largest oil producers, needs to buy LNG from abroad since it pumps little gas of its own. The crude diverted from power plants is likely to be exported.The country has a 15-year contract with state-owned Qatar Petroleum to buy 3 million tonnes of LNG a year for the Al-Zour facility.The main contract for the LNG terminal was awarded in 2016 to a consortium of South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering Company, Hyundai Engineering & Construction Company and Korea Gas Corporation, for $2.93bn. (ICE KUWAIT)

Fonte notizia: Meed