Page 11 - MEOG Week 02

MEOG PolICy MEOG
quickly as possible. At the time, media reported that the White House had ordered the Penta- gon to plan several alternatives for a response to the Saudi attacks. However, President Trump warned that steps were not to be taken before Riyadh decided how to respond to the attacks. There would be no “knee jerk” reactions.
Indeed, there were no knee jerk reactions to the attacks, but the report from the UN Security Council Yemen sanctions committee comes at a time of much heightened tension between the United States and Iran.
Interestingly enough, an earlier media report on their work said they had been unable to cor- roborate Iran’s involvement in the attacks. In december, the bbC reported on a leaked report
compiled by the UN Secretary-General, which said the investigators from the Security Council Yemen sanctions committee had failed to con- firm that the drones and missiles used in the Saudi attacks were made in Iran.
Now, according to the report Reuters had seen, “The panel notes that Abqaiq and Khurais were approached respectively from a north/ north-western and north/north-eastern direc- tion, rather than from the south, as one would expect in the case of a launch from Yemeni territory.”
The investigators also said they doubted the missiles “have a sufficient range to have been launched from Yemeni territory under the con- trol of the Houthis.”™
ProJeCts & ComPanIes
Kuwait anticipates PNZ output at 250,000 bpd by end of year
kUWaIt
KUWAITI oil output in the Neutral Zone it shares with Saudi Arabia is expected to reach 250,000 barrels per day when production restarts at the end of this year, the country’s oil minister said on Thursday.
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia agreed last year to end a five-year dispute over the area in a deal which will allow production to resume at two oilfields that can pump up to 0.5% of the world’s oil supply; specifically agreeing in december to resume oil production from the two oilfields they share in the Neutral Zone.
The so-called Partitioned Neutral Zone (PNZ) was established between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in 1922 to help settle a territorial dis- pute between the two countries.
In 2015, the oil production capacity in the neutral zone stood at 600,000 bpd, equally divided between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, according to the Energy Information Admin- istration (EIA). Production from the zone averaged around 500,000 bpd just before the
shutdown of the two oil fields, Khafji and Wafra, in 2014-2015.
Operational differences and a worsening in bilateral relations led to the suspension of pro- duction back in 2015. A factor in the worsening relations was Saudi Arabia’s renewal of Chevron’s concession for Wafra, said to have been made without consulting Kuwait.
The two neighbours have now agreed to restart the two oilfields, which could bring an additional 500,000-600,000 bpd on to the oil market. “Signing the memorandum of under- standing [MoU] means the return of production of250,000bpd...beforetheendof2020,”Reuters quoted Kuwait’s Oil Minister Khaled al-Fadhel as telling Parliament on Thursday.
According to the minister, the 250,000 bpd additional production capacity from the shared Neutral Zone will not have an impact on Kuwait’s compliance with the ongoing OPEC+ produc- tion cuts. OPEC and its Russia-led allies are set to review the current pact in March this year.™
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