Kuwait’s summer power crisis took a turn for the worse over the weekend after a malfunction at KNPC’s gas fractionation complex at Mina Al Ahmadi. The outages resulted in an abrupt drop in gas supplies to Kuwaiti power plants, forcing power generation units at the 7GW Sabiya and 2.5GW Doha West complexes to shut down from 17 August, before gradually ramping up from 19 August.
The outages came at an inopportune time for Kuwait as temperatures in the high 40°s drove high electricity demand. To prevent a total grid meltdown, the Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) cut electricity to 42 areas with power only returning gradually by 19 August. MEW continued to exclude some areas to prioritize service to residential users after this date according to local media. (CONTINUED - 983 WORDS)
