Kuwait crude production on the decline! Can we stem it?

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What happened to oil investments?

WHILE the rest of our Gulf oil producers are on track to increasing and boosting oil production within their planned strategies, we in Kuwait are doing the opposite, as we are actually losing production at a time when the oil prices are peaking at $80 per barrel, and the state is in desperate need of daily cash oil income. The decline or loss of production started in 2017 when our production rate was 3.143 million barrels per day.

Kamel Al-Harami

It reduced to 2.579 million barrels per day by the end of 2020. Within a period of four years, Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) lost 564,000 barrels or more than 100,000 barrels per day of loss of oil volume and revenues. The strange thing is that no one in the oil industry is saying a word, despite the figures published in KOC’s 2020/2021 annual report. How come all members of boards of KOC, KPC and Kuwait Supreme Council are silent? Or did they simply not do their homework? What happened to our heavy money investments and expenditures? Have they gone down the drain? Or is it being claimed now that KOC was trying hard to preserve and stop the decline? Of course, KOC is facing huge challenges with the decline of easy oils. Oil was fl owing easily through natural field pressure but now such an easy oil phase is gone.

New technical factors have to be introduced to maintain and sustain the same level of production. It seems that KOC has failed in this second phase due to lack of local manpower or necessary expertise through promotion, or worse through early retirement package or forced one for those with 30-35 years of experience who have been simply told to go home. The tragedy is that no one is aware or been told about the loss of crude oil production in all of our fields in north, south, east and west of Kuwait. Of course, KOC production doesn’t include the Khafji and Wafra neutral zones.

Kuwait’s current baseline for production is 2.89 million barrels per day. It did not ask for further production increase from May next year, unlike Saudi Arabia and Russia, which asked for more volumes of production at 11.5 million, and the United Arab Emirates for 3.5 million per day. On the other hand, Kuwait remains unchanged with the current level of baseline. We simply say that Kuwait must increase crude oil production … it is all fine with us … but to lose production and cash revenues is beyond any logic for a country with more than 90 billion of oil reserves. It is a real disaster.

By Kamel Al-Harami
Independent Oil Analyst

email: [email protected]

This news has been read 19037 times!

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