Al Ahmadi Governorate

Al Ahmadi Governorate is Kuwait's petroleum heartland—the southern governorate that contains the maximum concentration of oil refineries and serves as headquarters for the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) and Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC). The governorate takes its name from the planned city of Ahmadi, built in the 1940s by British oil companies as a company town for petroleum extraction workers. Al Ahmadi is the second most populous governorate behind Farwaniya, with significant expatriate worker populations in the oil and industrial sectors. Under a June 2024 Amiri Decree, Homoud Jaber Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah was appointed governor for a four-year term, overseeing a territory that generates a disproportionate share of Kuwait's hydrocarbon revenue. The governorate extends from industrial coastal areas south through residential communities to the Saudi border, encompassing both petroleum infrastructure and beach resort areas along the Arabian Gulf coast. Al Ahmadi's identity remains inseparable from oil—the industry that transformed Kuwait from a pearling and trading economy into one of the world's wealthiest per-capita nations.