Middle Eastern LNG demand in flux [Gas in Transition]

Summary

Rising Kuwaiti gas production could dent the region’s LNG imports, but will the country’s ambitious targets be met? Meanwhile, Egypt appears on the cusp of re-entering the LNG import market.

LNG imports into the gas-rich Middle East and Egypt’s connected gas system in North Africa have grown fast and faded almost as quickly as individual countries have discovered and developed more of their own resources. At a peak of 24.5bn m3 in 2016, the region looked like a major potential new market, but offshore Mediterranean gas put paid to continued growth (see figure 1). 
By 2022, LNG imports had dropped back to just 9.4bn m3, almost all accounted for by Kuwait. 
However, the regional gas balance is changing once again. Kuwait certainly has the below ground potential to replace all of its LNG imports with domestic production and has announced plans to do so. Questions remain over deliverability, timing and politics, but the country already last year appears to have capped to some degree the upward trend in its LNG volumes. 
Meanwhile, moving in the opposite direction, Egypt looks lik…