Kuwait Oil Company has made its first major onshore natural gas find with commercial potential, senior oil executives said.

The find is a boon for Kuwait, which has been searching for gas since 1978, but more aggressively in recent years at its northern and western fields, where it has been drilling deeper wells.
KOC made the significant find within a deep Jurassic formation in the newly designated northern field of Umm Niqa at well UN-001 just northeast of the vast Sabriya field, the sources said.
UN-001, which had already yielded significant ultra-light crude finds, was shown to produce “major quantities of gas from the Negma/Sargelu formation at around 14,200 feet,” said one of the executives, who said KOC was expected to make a formal announcement soon on the volume of gas.
“A continuous one-month test, or what is known as a long-term field test, was carried out by KOC on UN-001 and it confirmed the discovery of commercial gas in the Jurassic,” said the executive who also said a second, PVT (pressure-volume-temperature) laboratory test, “re-confirmed the findings”.
The second test was an assured way to confirm the field test results, said the executive explaining "the tests showed that the reservoir produced commercial amounts of both condensate and gas; the gas precipitated the condensate”.
Throughout 2005, KOC's exploration group had made several light crude discoveries with commercial potential at deeper layers of the reservoir beneath UN-001. It was those finds situated at the Lower, Middle and Upper Marrat intervals at between 15,100 and 14,500 feet which led engineers to conclude that significant amounts of lighter hydrocarbon or gas were present in the Negma/Sargelu formation above.
UN-001 had initially been identified as the Sabriya well (SA-215) when it was thought to be tapped into the Sabriya field.
KOC renamed the well UN-001 after tests of the light crude found at the Middle Marat interval indicated the amount of hydrocarbon available there which extended outside of Sabriya, was large enough for it to be considered an independent reservoir.
Engineers close to the KOC exploration group in northern Kuwait said they believe that the gas and condensate within the Umm Niqa reservoir runs predominately eastward towards the Gulf.
Kuwait badly needs gas to fuel its electrical power plants, and its fast growing petrochemical industry.
KOC’s costly efforts until now to find non-associated gas have produced only modest results with non-commercial potential.
The country has also signed deals with Iraq, Iran, and Qatar to import gas.