Kuwait hopes to nearly quadruple its gas output to 4 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) by 2030, including 1.5 bcfd of gas not tied to oilfield output, Khalid Al-Sumaiti, deputy managing director for exploration and production at KOC said.

By 2012 Kuwait expects to be pumping 600 million cfd from existing Jurassic era gas discoveries in the north of the country, rising to 1 bcfd by 2015-2016, he said.

But the Gulf OPEC oil producer, one of the world’s biggest crude exporters, must delve deep for the gas it needs to keep the lights on at home over the next few decades.

“The critical issue here is that we need to discover more gas for reaching that (4 bcfd) figure,” Al-Sumaiti said.

“We have to produce oil to get the gas. What is helping us now is the Jurassic gas... it does not affect our quota with OPEC.”

OPEC agrees oil production limits among members to try to avoid oversupply and weak prices, which is increasingly problematic for Middle Eastern countries where gas demand has risen rapidly over the last few years.

Like many of its neighbors, Kuwait has been slow to develop its gas reserves to meet domestic demand, mostly for power generation, and has had to fill a growing gap between supply and demand with imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Last year, Kuwait signed an agreement with Royal Dutch Shell and Vitol to supply LNG from 2010-2013.

Al-Sumaiti said Kuwait should be able to find enough non-associated gas to hit its 1.5 bcfd target in under 20 years, if work starts immediately.

“You have to start now to survey all your area, understand what is there, make the interpretations, drill holes, prove oil then go for development,” he said.

By the end of 2011 a tender for conducting seismic studies offshore to target deep oil and gas formations should be ready, he said.

Of the 4 bcfd target, some 1 bcfd is expected to come from existing discoveries, while Kuwait expects about 1 bcfd to come from associated gas production in 2030 and hopes to pump another 0.5 bcfd from the Dorra field which it shares with Saudi Arabia.