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PP RUEHDE RUEHDIR
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ZNY SSSSS ZZH
P 111400Z JUN 08
FM AMEMBASSY KUWAIT
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 1641
INFO RUEHZM/GULF COOPERATION COUNCIL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHBJ/AMEMBASSY BEIJING PRIORITY 0488
RUEHHI/AMEMBASSY HANOI PRIORITY 0020
RUEHKO/AMEMBASSY TOKYO PRIORITY 0392
RUCPDOC/DEPT OF COMMERCE WASHDC PRIORITY
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHDC PRIORITY
RHEBAAA/DEPT OF ENERGY WASHDC PRIORITY

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 08 KUWAIT 000665 
 
SIPDIS 
 
EB/ESC/IEC FOR GALLOGLY AND GRIFFIN, NEA/ARP FOR JACKSON 
AND BAGWELL, ENERGY FOR IE 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/24/2023 
TAGS: EPET ENRG EINV KU OIL SECTOR
SUBJECT: CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM ABOUT KUWAIT'S HYDROCARBON 
SECTOR, BUT MANY CAUSES FOR CONCERN 
 
REF: A. 07 KUWAIT 707 
     ¶B. 07 KUWAIT 1626 
     ¶C. 07 KUWAIT 1744 
 
Classified By: Ambassador Deborah Jones for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) 
 
Summary and Comment 
-------------------- 
 
¶1.  (C)  Kuwait's new Oil Minister and the new CEO of Kuwait 
Petroleum Corporation (KPC) have led a number of positive 
developments in Kuwait's oil sector in the past year and have 
announced plans to make USD 55 billion of investments in new 
projects over the next five years.  After several years of 
relative stagnation, ambitious projects for refineries, 
petrochemical plants, gas production, and heavy crude 
production finally seem to be moving forward both 
domestically and internationally.  Nevertheless, the outlook 
for "Project Kuwait," the long delayed plan to invite 
international oil companies (IOCs) to participate in the 
development of a handful of Kuwait's northern oil fields 
through operating service agreements, still looks bleak. 
However, the leaders of Kuwait's oil sector and local country 
managers of IOCs are now much more optimistic about the 
prospects for Enhanced Technical Service Agreements (ETSAs), 
under which KPC would pay high fixed fees and variable, 
production-based incentives for IOCs to assign a significant 
number of engineers and managers to Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) 
as long-term "consultants."  This model envisions a robust 
partnership in which IOCs would devote more technology, 
expertise, and resources to the expansion of Kuwait's crude 
oil production capacity.  At the same time, KPC's successful 
partnership with Dow Chemical continues to grow. 
 
¶2.  (C) Significant challenges remain.  Populist opposition 
MPs play on public sentiments of resource nationalism and 
make it difficult for the government to launch new projects, 
especially those of potential benefit to foreign companies. 
At the same time, problems of recruiting, training, and 
retention at KPC are resulting in a growing talent deficit 
that makes robust IOC involvement even more essential.  The 
threat of power outages looms large again this summer as the 
Ministry of Electricity struggles ineffectively to build new 
power plants and KPC struggles to produce the environmentally 
friendly fuel (both gas and low-sulfur fuel oil) needed to 
power them.  Finally, the vulnerability of Kuwait's energy 
infrastructure to terrorist attack remains significant.  The 
success of the oil sector's leaders in implementing these new 
projects and partnerships over the anticipated resistance of 
the new Parliament, which will become active in the fall 
after Ramadan, will be a bellwether for Kuwait's oil sector 
in the coming years.  End Summary and Comment. 
 
New Domestic Projects 
--------------------- 
 
¶3.  (U) KPC, the parent corporation of Kuwait's ten 
state-owned hydrocarbon companies, has announced plans to 
invest USD 55 billion in new projects over the next five 
years.  Domestically, these projects are divided between KOC, 
which handles upstream exploration and production; Kuwait 
National Petroleum Company (KNPC), which handles downstream 
refining and marketing; and Petrochemicals Industries Company 
(PIC). The following domestic and international projects 
(along with prospective ETSAs listed in the IOC section 
further below) will consume the bulk of the USD 55 billion: 
 
     ¶A.  New Refinery Project (NRP):  the contracts for this 
USD 14 billion (est.) project will finally be awarded later 
this summer after years of delay.  The refinery, to be 
located in the Kuwait portion of the Partitioned Neutral Zone 
(PNZ) adjacent to the Saudi Arabian Chevron (SAC) compound at 
Mina Al-Zour, will be rated to produce 615,000 bbl/d but is 
designed primarily to produce 225,000 bbl/d of 
environmentally-friendly, low-sulfur fuel oil for use in 
Kuwait's thermal (steam) power plants.  It will process 
Kuwaiti heavy crude, which is difficult for the Kuwaitis to 
market internationally.  KNPC's CEO says it is impossible to 
import sufficient quantities of low-sulfur fuel oil for power 
generation, so in the interest of protecting the environment, 
Kuwait has decided to build this refinery to produce the fuel 
locally despite the astronomical cost of the project which 
 
KUWAIT 00000665  002 OF 008 
 
 
far exceeds KNPC's original budget.  A long-running dispute 
involving the GOK, Saudi government, KNPC, and SAC over the 
location of the refinery was finally resolved after an April 
meeting between the Amir of Kuwait and the King of Saudi 
Arabia.  The Kuwaitis agreed to move the refinery a few 
hundred meters southward and inland in order to avoid 
interfering with SAC's current operations and expansion 
plans.  On 11 May, KNPC announced the winners of the major 
contract packages for the refinery.  These include Korean, 
Japanese, and Kuwaiti companies, as well as U.S.-based Fluor. 
 Contracts are expected to be signed in July.  Unusually for 
Kuwait, the contracts are being awarded on a cost-plus basis, 
so the ultimate cost of the project remains to be determined. 
 
     ¶B.  Clean Fuels Program:  this is a USD 19 billion 
(est.) project to expand and upgrade two existing refineries 
at Mina Al-Ahmadi and Mina Abdullah.  Unlike the low-sulfur 
fuel oil produced through NRP, the low-sulfur middle 
distillates produced through CFP will be produced primarily 
for export to western countries with stringent emissions 
regulations.  The combined processing capacity of the two 
refineries will be increased by 200,000 bbl/d by 2012 when 
Kuwait's aging and accident-prone Shuaiba refinery is due to 
be retired.  Contracts will likely be awarded in August. U.S. 
companies Bechtel and KBR are expected to bid.  Once NRP and 
CFP are fully onstream and Shuaiba is retired, Kuwait's total 
refining capacity will have increased from 900,000 bbl/d to 
1.4 million bbl/d. 
 
     ¶C.  Non-associated Gas Early Production Facilities 
(EPFs):  this three-stage project is for the development of 
the 35 trillion cubic foot (est.) non-associated, Jurassic 
gas field, whose discovery was announced in early 2006. 
Initial estimates predict that 60-70 percent of this gas is 
ultimately recoverable.  The USD 240 million, five-year, 
first-phase contract was awarded to the local Safwan 
Petroleum Technologies.  It is essentially a 
build-operate-transfer (BOT) contract under which Safwan is 
expected to produce 175 million cf/d of gas as well as 50,000 
b/d of condensate.  Production began in early June, two 
months behind schedule.  A second phase will increase 
production to 600 million cf/d by 2011, with a third phase 
bringing output to 1 billion cf/d by 2016, according to KOC. 
The second phase has yet to be tendered.  Methane from the 
EPFs will primarily go to domestic power generation, whereas 
ethane and condensate will go to Kuwait's petrochemical 
plants.  It is worth noting that under the EPFs, KOC is 
effectively paying a private company to extract upstream 
resources on its behalf.  This marks a significant departure 
from KOC's previous position that private companies could do 
no more than provide technical services. 
 
     ¶D.  Early Production Facilities for Wet Sour Crude: 
this relatively small (USD 117 million) contract is 
noteworthy because an American company, California-based 
Processes Unlimited, has been hired by KOC to independently 
produce 120,000 bbl/d of wet sour crude and 80 million cf/d 
of liquefied petroleum gas.  This is a BOT contract similar 
to the gas EPF.  To the best of our knowledge, it is the only 
instance of an American company being given what amounts to a 
production contract, albeit without production sharing, 
outside of Chevron's work in the Neutral Zone. 
 
     ¶E.  LNG Processing Facilities:  in March, Kuwait signed 
a USD 150 million contract with Texas-based Excelerate Energy 
to build import facilities for liquefied natural gas (LNG) 
for completion by April 2009.  In April, Excelerate accepted 
delivery of an advanced-technology LNG regasification vessel 
under a 25-year charter from Daewoo Ltd. of South Korea. 
KNPC plans to import 500 to 750 million cf/d of LNG from 
Qatar starting in summer 2009 for power generation during 
Kuwait's peak consumption season of May-September.  LNG 
negotiations between KNPC and RasGas of Qatar are ongoing. 
LNG imports are intended to be a temporary measure for three 
to four years until domestic gas production reaches 
sufficient scale to make Kuwait self-sufficient in producing 
natural gas for power generation and petrochemical feedstock. 
 
 
     ¶F.  New Petrochemical Facilities:  through its joint 
venture with Michigan-based Dow Chemical Company, PIC is 
completing its USD 5 billion Olefins II and Aromatics 
 
KUWAIT 00000665  003 OF 008 
 
 
projects which will produce ethylene, polyethylene, glycol, 
and styrene.  The first phase of Olefins II will be online in 
August 08.  Aromatics is expected to come online in the first 
quarter of 2009.  American contractors Fluor and Bechtel are 
participating in the construction. 
 
     ¶G.  Additional Projects: KOC and KNPC are also tendering 
projects for pipelines, gathering centers, export 
infrastructure, gas trains, and security installations. 
 
International Projects 
---------------------- 
 
¶4.  (U) Internationally, Kuwait's upstream (exploration and 
crude oil and gas production) projects are managed by Kuwait 
Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company (KUFPEC) and downstream 
(refining and retail marketing) projects are managed by 
Kuwait Petroleum International (KPI).  Petrochemical projects 
are managed by Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC). 
 
     ¶A.  In April, KPI announced a USD 6 billion refining and 
petrochemical joint venture in Vietnam's Thanh Hoa province 
with Japanese partners Idemitsu Kosan and Mitsui and 
Vietnamese partner Petrovietnam.  KPI will hold a 35 percent 
stake.  The 200,000 bbl/d refinery will process only Kuwaiti 
crude. It is expected to come online in 2013. 
 
     ¶B.  KPI is partnering with Sinopec, Dow Chemical 
Company, and possibly Shell to build a 300,000 bbl/d refinery 
and petrochemical complex in China's southern Guangdong 
Province. Approval for the USD five billion complex, which 
will also process only Kuwaiti crude, is awaiting the 
completion of feasibility studies and environmental permits. 
 
     ¶C.  KPI has also been in talks with Reliance Industries 
and other Indian companies about building a 150,000-400,000 
bbl/d refinery-petrochemical complex in India. 
 
     ¶D.  In December, Dow Chemical announced a new 50-50 
joint venture with PIC to be established by the end of 2008. 
The joint petrochemical company will be headquartered in the 
United States and employ about 5,000 people including staff 
from each of the parent companies.  The managing director 
will be from Dow and his deputy will be from PIC.  The 
venture will manufacture and market polyethylene, 
ethylenamines, ethanolamines, polypropylene, and 
polycarbonate.  To create the company, Dow is selling PIC 
portions of its production facilities in Canada, Argentina, 
Spain, Texas, and Louisiana for USD 9.5 billion, 50 per cent 
of the asset value of the new venture.  Revenues for the 
first year of operations are projected to be USD 11 billion. 
This major investment by PIC will be one of the first cases 
to go through the recently revamped CFIUS process. 
 
     ¶E.  For a number of years, KPC has been considering 
investment in a new refinery in the United States but has 
been deterred by perceived regulatory and permitting 
challenges.  KPC managers say they have not ruled out the 
possibility of such a project, but they would want an 
established, reputable U.S. partner, assurances of assistance 
with the regulatory red tape and political support from the 
government of the host state.  Pending anti-OPEC legislation 
which might place KPC's U.S. assets at risk is another 
significant deterrent to investment. 
 
Cooperation with IOCs, Service Companies 
---------------------------------------- 
 
¶5.  (C) International Oil Companies (IOCs) including 
ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Total, and Shell continue to 
maintain a permanent (if token) presence in Kuwait even 
though the outlook for Project Kuwait, the (originally) USD 
8.5 billion proposal to invite IOCs to participate as 
partners in the development of some of Kuwait's more 
difficult northern oil fields through Operating Service 
Agreements, is bleak.  Despite press statements by the Amir, 
Prime Minister, and Oil Minister in apparent support of the 
Project, and a recent statement suggesting that the terms of 
conditions of the prospective Project Kuwait contracts have 
been updated, the combination of contentious relations 
between the Parliament and the Government, exceptionally 
strong government finances which make the project seem 
 
KUWAIT 00000665  004 OF 008 
 
 
unnecessary, and a lack of consistent political leadership of 
Kuwait's oil sector (eight ministers in the 17 years since 
liberation, compared to Saudi Arabia's three oil ministers in 
the last 45 years) all diminish the chances of getting 
Project Kuwait through the Parliament. 
 
¶6.  (C) Resource nationalism is ably exploited by several of 
Kuwait's more strident opposition MPs.  One embassy contact 
from the Supreme Petroleum Council says that most MPs 
understand the need for Project Kuwait but continue to play 
politics and cater to special interests, allowing patronage 
and tribalism to trump broader, long-term national interests. 
 Furthermore, local IOC managers suspect that the current 
terms and conditions of contracts would not adequately 
account for current market conditions, so even if the Project 
Kuwait legislation were to be approved by the Parliament, the 
major IOCs might decline to bid. 
 
¶7.  (C) As reported previously (reftels), in the long absence 
of any progress on Project Kuwait, KOC managers and several 
of the IOCs are now pursuing "enhanced" technical service 
agreements (ETSAs) as an alternative.  In order to meet its 
production targets, KOC recognizes that more IOC technology 
and expertise is needed to develop more complex reservoirs 
and process heavier and more sour crude. Under the ETSA 
model, Kuwait would pay premium prices to have IOCs assign 
engineers and managers to Kuwait Oil Company as long-term 
"consultants."  High fixed fees would be complemented by 
variable, performance-based pay contingent upon meeting 
agreed production targets. 
 
¶8.  (C) Former KOC Chairman Farouk Al-Zanki told the 
Ambassador in January 2007 that under existing TSAs the IOCs 
do "everything for us" (i.e. provide assistance with 
exploration, reservoir mapping, production planning, and 
field operations), but "they don't get paid enough for doing 
it."  The IOC managers agree that they are not getting paid 
enough under existing TSAs; so, given the bleak outlook for 
Project Kuwait and the increasing scarcity of qualified 
petroleum engineers, the IOCs are now prepared to let their 
existing TSAs with KOC expire.  BP's expired on May 31. 
Chevron's expires in August.  Country managers from both 
companies tell us that if they fail to reach favorable terms 
with KOC for a TSA, they are prepared to close up their shops 
in Kuwait since the meager returns they have to show after 
more than a decade of pursuing unrealized opportunities (such 
as Project Kuwait) make it difficult for them to justify 
dedicating any more resources here.  Chevron's presence in 
Kuwait has already diminished from 40 expatriate engineers 
last year to only four today.  BP's presence has been 
gradually reduced to seven expatriate engineers from a high 
of 45 four years ago. 
 
¶9.  (SBU) On the bright side, the local IOC managers are 
guardedly optimistic about the prospects for lucrative ETSAs. 
 Exxon is the most enthusiastic and currently seems to be the 
best positioned.  In October, KOC announced it had signed a 
Heads of Agreement (similar to a memorandum of understanding) 
with ExxonMobil to develop heavy crude oil reserves under an 
ETSA.  As Kuwait's light crude reservoirs age, KOC will 
increasingly need to turn to its abundant reserves of heavy 
crude to meet its ambitious oil production targets. 
According to KOC Deputy Managing Director for North Kuwait 
Khalid Al-Sumaiti, as reported in the Middle East Economic 
Digest, "The plan is to have heavy oil constituting almost 25 
per cent of Kuwait's 2020 oil production."  Yet, KOC has 
almost no experience with heavy oil production, processing, 
or marketing; so under the terms of the prospective deal, 
Exxon would be "involved in all aspects of the production 
chain from upstream to downstream," said Al-Sumaiti. "We will 
use the enhanced TSA framework for the upstream element, and 
probably a joint venture for the downstream aspect."  The 
final terms will be ironed out once an ongoing feasibility 
study is completed.  KOC announced that this study would be 
completed in July 2008.  Exxon expects it to be completed 
later in the year and hopes to have the contract(s) ironed 
out by early 2009. 
 
¶10.  (SBU) Separately, Chevron and BP are negotiating ETSAs 
with KOC for the Burgan field complex and Kuwait's western 
oil fields respectively.  Chevron and KOC have essentially 
agreed on all the terms except the price.  At this point, it 
 
KUWAIT 00000665  005 OF 008 
 
 
is unclear whether they will arrive at a mutually acceptable 
figure.  BP has a draft Heads of Agreement but continues to 
be frustrated at KOC's unwillingness to treat it as an 
integrated oil company rather than a service company.  BP 
essentially wants to be able to operate autonomously in the 
fields assigned to it and receive adequate remuneration for 
the risk it assumes.  KOC has approached Shell about an ETSA 
for gas production and development, but Shell is apparently 
uncomfortable with any arrangement that does not allow it to 
take some kind of equity stake.  Total is expected to abandon 
Kuwait after its existing TSA expires.  Conoco Phillips is 
reportedly positioning itself to negotiate an ETSA for the 
western fields in case BP's negotiations fall through.  KOC 
has also reportedly approached Statoil, Repsol, and Marathon 
about ETSAs, but none of the talks has advanced very far. 
 
¶11.  (C) KOC is proceeding with the hope that the ETSA 
framework will attract more robust participation by IOCs 
while obviating the need for parliamentary approval that 
Project Kuwait would have required.  However, the Parliament 
is bound to watch developments closely.  Populist MP Ahmed 
Al-Saadoun, a long-time critic of IOC involvement in Kuwait 
who was re-elected on May 17, has already demanded 
clarification from the Oil Ministry on the terms of the Exxon 
deal. 
 
¶12.  (SBU) Meanwhile, as IOC involvement remains constrained 
and KOC's own levels of technology and talent remain limited, 
the big winners are oil field service companies like 
Halliburton and Schlumberger and project management 
consultants like Fluor and Amec.  Halliburton and 
Schlumberger each have several hundred employees on the 
ground in Kuwait to whom KOC has outsourced almost all of its 
field work and some of its management responsibilities. 
Fluor and Amec have both signed multi-million dollar 
contracts in the past year to manage both upstream and 
downstream projects. 
 
Plans for R&D and Environmental Innovation 
------------------------------------------ 
 
¶13.  (C) The leaders of Kuwait's energy sector are also 
considering new investments in Kuwait's virtually 
non-existent research and development capabilities.  A blue 
ribbon panel established by the Amir in 2007 produced a 
proposal, subsequently endorsed by the Amir, calling for new 
funding for research focused on petroleum (especially heavy 
crude), solar energy, and water desalination.  KPC also has 
tentative plans to create a new petroleum research center in 
partnership with Texas A&M, Colorado School of Mines, MIT, 
IFP (France), Schlumberger, and/or Exxon.  KPC and the Oil 
Ministry have also announced plans to invest in Carbon 
Capture and Storage (CCS) technology to reduce Kuwait's 
greenhouse gas emissions and possibly inject captured CO2 
into underpressurized oil reservoirs. 
 
Leadership, Strategy, and Staffing 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶14.  (C) The current leadership of the Oil Ministry and KPC 
provides cause for cautious optimism.  KPC CEO Saad 
Al-Shuwaib, who took the helm of KPC only a year ago, has 
been remarkably successful in launching important projects, 
expanding KPC's international presence, and streamlining 
corporate management.  A University of Wisconsin-educated 
engineer, Al-Shuwaib worked his way up through the ranks of 
KPC's Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC) before being 
selected as CEO of KPC in April 2007.  While at PIC, 
Al-Shuwaib built the company's hugely successful partnership 
with Dow Chemicals, first creating a petrochemical joint 
venture in Kuwait, and then exporting the Dow-KPC partnership 
to other parts of the world.  Al-Shuwaib has a reputation for 
being a hands-on manager who is not shy about asserting 
control.  Since becoming KPC CEO, with the support of a 
non-interfering Oil Minister, Al-Shuwaib changed the 
composition of the KPC corporate board, created an 
International Advisory Board, appointed new CEOs and Deputy 
CEOs at each of KPC's subsidiaries, streamlined and 
consolidated KPC's chain of command to improve communication 
and decision-making, and announced plans for USD 55 billion 
in new investment over the next five years after years of 
underinvestment and unrealized projects.  Since becoming CEO, 
 
KUWAIT 00000665  006 OF 008 
 
 
Al-Shuwaib has met with the CEOs of all of the major IOCs in 
person, except Chevron's David O'Reilly, and visited all of 
KPC's leading customers in Asia. 
 
¶15.  (C) In terms of strategy, Al-Shuwaib touts KPC's 
ambitious domestic crude oil production targets of 3.0 
million bbl/d by 2010, 3.5 million by 2015, and 4.0 million 
by 2020.  He freely admits that ETSAs are the only way KPC 
can hope to reach these targets.  KPC is also clearly more 
focused under Al-Shuwaib on developing international markets, 
especially emerging markets in Asia, through partnerships 
with both local companies and world-class refiners and 
petrochemical companies like Shell and Dow Chemical.  Many of 
these new international ventures are in the downstream and 
follow the model of building a joint-venture refinery and 
petrochemical facility designed, and contractually obligated, 
to accept only Kuwaiti crude.  KUFPEC, Kuwait's subsidiary 
for foreign exploration and production in the upstream, 
remains a minor player, producing only 60,000 bbl/d. 
Institutionally, Al-Shuwaib wants to remove politics from the 
oil sector and make KPC run more like a commercial company 
and less like a government ministry.  In the medium term, he 
hopes to consolidate KPC's ten subsidiaries into an upstream 
company, a downstream (refining and marketing) company, and a 
petrochemical company.  Eventually, he would like to convert 
Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, which is currently incorporated 
as a government body, into Kuwait Petroleum Company, which 
would be regulated by Kuwaiti commercial law and function 
with greater independence from the government.  This final 
goal is probably a bridge too far since the necessary 
enabling legislation would require Parliamentary approval. 
 
¶16. (C) Oil, Electricity, and Water Minister Mohammed 
Al-Olaim, whose appointment was renewed on June 1, has, 
despite being an Islamist and formerly a politically 
aggressive MP, performed more like a technocrat as 
Electricity Minister since March 2007,  and Acting Oil 
Minister since June 2007.  He has a degree in industrial 
engineering degree from North Carolina A&T and previously 
worked as Director of Planning at KOC.  He is well respected 
by the oil sector managers, largely because he has been 
exceptionally hands-off, allowing KPC's management team to 
run the business without the usual unwelcome political 
interference from the Ministry and Parliament.  He is 
supportive of plans to expand KPC's cooperation with 
international oil companies (IOCs), but, as discussed above, 
the Parliament is likely to thwart any such plans.  As 
Electricity Minister, he continues to fight a difficult 
battle to make new investments to expand Kuwait's 
insufficient power generating capacity, but a sclerotic and 
politicized public contracting system has largely tied his 
hands. 
 
¶17.  (C) Turning to KPC's limited capabilities to increase 
production without the support of IOCs, oil sector managers 
complain that they face significant challenges in recruiting, 
training, motivating, and retaining qualified professionals. 
Kuwait University's petroleum engineering department has 
difficulty attracting talented students and graduates only 20 
petroleum engineers per year.  A petroleum engineering 
professor and member of Kuwait's Supreme Petroleum Council 
(SPC) says he encourages his best students to work for IOCs, 
where they will receive mentoring and continual professional 
development, which they would not receive at the KOC. This 
contact added that, in his opinion, the 1975 nationalization 
of KOC was one of the greatest blunders in the history of the 
country.  He contrasts the high level of training and 
exposure that his generation of petroleum engineers received 
from BP and Gulf (now Chevron) with the lack of attention 
paid to professional development in today's KOC.  One IOC 
country manager explains that "within KOC, employees are 
treated as a cost center, rather than as assets to be 
invested in."  Several contacts have remarked that the 
Government effectively uses the KPC companies as a jobs 
program.  Within the Kuwaiti system, job placement and 
advancement are generally based on family connections more 
than talent and qualifications, so there is little extrinsic 
incentive to excel at work. Those with an innate desire to 
achieve tend to gravitate towards the private sector.  In 
recent years, a number of the more talented engineers and 
managers at the KPC companies have left to join IOCs or start 
consultancies or services companies.  These difficult 
 
KUWAIT 00000665  007 OF 008 
 
 
circumstances have led many of KPC's senior managers to the 
inevitable conclusion that greater participation by IOCs is 
critical to the long-term health of Kuwait's oil sector. 
 
Fuel for Power Generation 
------------------------- 
 
¶18.  (C) Kuwait's electrical generating capacity has come 
under strain due to years of underinvestment in new power 
plants and rapidly rising (eight percent per annum) 
consumption, which is heavily financed by government 
subsidies.  The level of subsidies and the impunity enjoyed 
by those who refuse to pay their electrical bills mean that 
there is effectively no price mechanism to moderate usage. 
The current capacity of Kuwait's six power plants is about 
10,500 MW.  The maximum peak loads for summer 2008 are 
expected to exceed this capacity, leading to rolling 
blackouts during the peak consumption hours of the afternoon. 
 Last summer, the Ministry of Electricity and Water barely 
avoided widespread outages by shutting down power to 
government offices after sending employees home in the early 
afternoon.  Unfortunately, the Ministry has probably squeezed 
as much spare capacity as it can out of this forced 
conservation measure, so the likelihood of major outages this 
summer is great. (Note: These outages are not expected to 
significantly affect the Embassy or DoD facilities in Kuwait. 
 Many of these facilities have their own generators and the 
Ministry of Electricity and Water assures us that they will 
be treated as vital load centers.  End note.) 
 
¶19.  (C) A lack of new power plants is the biggest problem 
affecting Kuwait's power sector, but figuring out how to fuel 
these plants is another dilemma.  According to the CEO of 
KOC, Kuwait currently consumes about two billion BTU/day. 
This figure is expected to rise to 5 billion by 2020. 
According to figures provided by the Ministry of Electricity 
and Water, about 66 percent of Kuwait's power is currently 
generated by traditional thermal (steam) plants with the 
remaining 34 percent generated by gas turbines.  In terms of 
fuel, 58.2 percent of Kuwait's power comes from the burning 
of high-sulfur heavy fuel oil (resulting in high levels of 
air pollution), 18.4 percent from the burning of crude oil, 
2.4 percent from gas oil, and 20.9 percent  from cheaper and 
cleaner burning natural gas.  KOC's CEO says Kuwait's 
oil-fired power plants consume 125,000 bbl/d of crude, which 
equates to more than USD 12 million/day or USD 4.4 
billion/year in lost export revenues.  While the burning of 
crude oil and heavy fuel oil accounts for 76.6 percent of 
Kuwait's power, it accounts for 92.4 percent of fuel costs. 
In light of this lost revenue and the environmental impact of 
burning crude oil and heavy fuel oil, the GOK has decided 
that all of Kuwait's new power plants will be gas turbines. 
However, domestic gas production is still limited and it will 
be a number of years before Kuwait's thermal plants can be 
decommissioned. 
 
¶20.  (C) Once the new refinery is complete, the low-sulfur 
heavy fuel oil it produces will be burned to produce about 
1.2 billion BTU.  An additional 1.6 billion is expected to 
come from the burning of associated gas from Kuwait's oil 
fields. (Note: KOC claims that it currently flares ten 
percent of the associated gas produced from Kuwait's oil 
fields.  It recently announced plans to reduce flaring to 
zero to protect the environment and capture more gas for 
power generation.  End note.)  Once the domestic production 
of Kuwait's non-associated gas reaches full scale, by about 
2016, Kuwait hopes to produce enough gas domestically to meet 
all its power needs.  In the meantime, the GOK plans to use 
LNG imports from Qatar to fill the gap.  Despite sporadic 
conversations with Iran about a possible pipeline to supply 
gas from Iran to Kuwait, the leaders of Kuwait's oil sector 
say they have no serious plans to import gas from Iran, which 
they consider to be an unreliable supplier.  Occasional talks 
about importing gas from Iraq have made little progress. 
 
 
Critical Infrastructure Protection 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶21. (S) Kuwait's efforts to reduce the vulnerability of its 
critical energy infrastructure to physical attack remain 
piecemeal, uncoordinated, and generally inadequate.  While 
 
KUWAIT 00000665  008 OF 008 
 
 
projects have been implemented to physically strengthen 
perimeter security, security forces still lack resources and 
training; command, control, and communications remain 
dysfunctional; access controls are insufficient; and security 
upgrades are installed without giving adequate consideration 
to integration or a broader, systemic approach.  The GOK 
remains hesitant to sign an MOU with the USG to create a 
Joint Working Group for Critical Energy Infrastructure 
Protection (CEIP), citing problems with the GOK's internal 
bureaucracy which make it impossible to place overall 
authority for CEIP under any single government entity.  A 
well coordinated attack on Kuwait's refineries, export 
facilities, or petrochemical plants (which are almost all 
co-located) could have a crippling effect on the country's 
capacity to export both crude oil and refined products. 
 
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For more reporting from Embassy Kuwait, visit: 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/kuwait/?cable s 
 
Visit Kuwait's Classified Website: 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/kuwait/ 
********************************************* * 
JONES