Kuwait Petroleum to Drill for Oil, Gas in Vietnam

Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Co., a unit of Kuwait Petroleum Corp., will drill for crude and natural gas in Vietnam next year, media reports said.

The company is likely to start drilling the first well in the three blocks it owns in Vietnam since 2009.

Meanwhile, state run PetroVietnam has warned that natural gas reserves in mines around Vietnam, most notably those off the southeast coast, are likely to be completely depleted in the next ten years.

The primary cause of this rapid exhaustion is the current overexploitation of gas for power and fertilizer production.

Vietnam currently has two main gas supplies: the Ca Mau-based PM3 mine, capable of extracting around 4 million cubic meters a day; and the Nam Con Son and Bach Ho mines in the southeast region, which produce a total of 20 million cubic meters of natural gas a day.