Kuwaiti National Assembly Members Consider Oil Depletion Protocol

[hatrack]

Ten members of the Kuwaiti National Assembly last week tabled a motion to link Kuwait's crude oil production with its oil reserve. After it is passed by parliament it will become a law under which the Ministry of Energy and the oil sector will operate.

The motion comes from National Assembly members seven months after a report published by the 'Petroleum Intelligence Weekly', which is a prestigious and internationally acclaimed specialized magazine. The bulletin stated that the actual volume of oil reserve is about 24 billion barrels and it is almost the same volume of the potential reserve. This means that the total reserve stands at about 50 billion barrels, and that the oil industry will last another 25 years or more according to the production capacity of the oil reserve, which is not yet finally defined. Other sources of information, such as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and specialized publications all indicate that the Kuwaiti reserve ranges between 85 and 102 billion barrels of actual and potential crude oil.

The Kuwaiti Ministry of Energy and its oil sector have not yet verified the exact figure of the oil reserve, because it wants to assure the world and Kuwait in particular. With this lack of information, some MPs asked the former Minister of Energy a direct question about the accuracy of the published information. The National Assembly has provided all the information on the nation's oil reserve in general, and the tables and statistics on the quantity of reserve in each field, and the number of discovered reservoirs that are being developed. With the beginning of the new session of the new National Assembly last week, ten members tabled a four-item objective bill. In the absence of real information about the size of oil reserve amid growing queries and doubts, the purpose of their motion is to ensure proper utilization of the exhausted oil riches to stop the depletion of this wealth. The bill also aims to ensure that this wealth lasts, but under the umbrella of the government and the National Assembly.

If approved, Kuwait will be the first oil state to regulate and tie up oil production with the rate of oil reserve quantities. Certainly, all the other oil states will follow up on this thorny issue carefully. So, too, will the consumer countries. The proposed bill illustrates the mechanisms of calculating the production of crude oil while estimating the volume of oil reserve. This is done by calculating the amount of Kuwait's crude oil output and the size of the oil reserve for two consecutive years. The bill will be passed immediately after the government sends the official information to the National Assembly and the State Audit Bureau (SAB) of Kuwait. If the quantity of oil reserve remains constant, the daily production will remain stable. The production goes up or down depending on the quantities.

EDIT

http://www.energybulletin.net/18646.html

[Joanne98]

1. hmmm! I wonder what this is really about.