British Business Forum holds meeting – Andrea’s address given insight into Kuwait oil sector

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KUWAIT CITY, Oct 20: The British Business Forum (BBF), a non-profit making association of British business people in Kuwait, held its monthly meeting recently at the Costa del Sol, hotel in downtown Kuwait City.

The guest speaker of the evening was Ms Andrea Reyman-Cruz, a graduate of MIT and who has more than 35 years of experience in the upstream oil sector in various technical, commercial and managerial roles. She gave a talk on ‘Oil Price Consideration for Kuwait’.

Addressing the BBF members and their guests, Ms Andrea gave an insight of the oil sector in Kuwait — the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, (KPC) and its two main subsidiaries the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) and the Kuwait National Petroleum Corporation (KNPC) which is headed by the Minister of Oil.

Ms Andrea, whose global experience includes the former CIS, offshore and unconventional assets, said the oil sector is incredibly important to Kuwait since it dominates the GDP with 90 percent of exports revenue and 80 percent of government income.

The oil expert who has worked for 32 years with Shell both in the United States and in Shell’s international new business group in the Netherlands, disclosed the global oil production is 96 million barrels of oil per day and Kuwait’s share in it is 2.5 million barrels per day, while the big contributors are Saudi Arabia, the US and Russia, who between them produce about 40 percent of the world production.

She went on to say although Saudi Arabia produces oil five times more than Kuwait, in terms of supporting its citizens Kuwait stands a better chance because the population of Saudi Arabia is 20 times more.

As a result of drop in oil prices, she said, the economies of the world countries have suffered, particularly the oil producing nations, and gave an insight of what happened in the 1980s, when workers were laid off and some of the oil rigs remained dormant.

The recent bust in the oil industry has been steep and deep and she blamed this on oversupply conditions with Iran joining the market, US producing shale oil and Iraq increasing its production to meet the country’s several needs and the demand for oil is not as has been anticipated.

To add insult to injury the policies of each oil producing country, she said, are not supportive of changing the situation and likened the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to playing what she called ‘free for all’ card.

As a result of the downtrend in the price of oil, companies are making no money since the investments have dropped by almost 40 percent to roughly $225 billion globally in 2014-2015.

Ms Andrea, who since 2012 has been with KUFPEC (The Kuwait International arm of the upstream oil sector) and currently Advisor to the VP Operations, said this is a tremendous sum of money which is being pulled out of the system so quickly.

Prior to coming to Kuwait, she was Manager of LNG and Gas Commercialization for North America.

The proceedings were conducted by Donald Teale, Treasurer, BBF.

Working closely with the British Embassy, the forum provides an opportunity for the British business community to meet on a regular basis, supports the creation of business networks, facilitates discussions with business people and VIPs visiting Kuwait and liaises with overseas trade agencies in the United Kingdom.

By Paul Francis X. Fernandes – Arab Times Staff

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