Oil prices to improve this year: minister

KUWAIT CITY, May 3: Minister of Oil and State Minister for National Assembly Affairs Dr Ali Al-Omair says he is hoping for an improvement in the oil prices in the second half of this year, reports Al-Rai daily.

In a press statement that he issued on the sidelines of a ceremony organized by Kuwait Chamber of Arbitration and Mediation in honor of 103 arbitrators who graduated, the minister indicated that he is expecting the oil prices to continue increasing after touching $60 per barrel.

He affirmed that the economic indicators reveal growth and recovery of the world economy, which means the demand for oil supply will increase and in turn lead to higher oil prices.

Dr Al-Omair said, “We suffered a huge loss of $2.3 billion in the Dow Chemical project because of the arbitration clause and weakness of the representatives of Kuwait in the arbitration process”, stressing the urgent need for the country to adopt an arbitration culture for protecting it from disputes due to differences in the contracts locally, regionally and internationally.

Meanwhile, regarding the problems experienced with the Wafra oil field, the minister said, “We cannot talk much about this subject now but we can expect a breakthrough in the problem”.

Dr Ali Al-Omair says alternative strategy is a state project and not a ministerial project, reports Al-Rai daily.

He insisted that the project is not related to Ministry of Oil or the oil sector, revealing that the Cabinet has referred the project to the National Assembly and is currently being studied by the parliament’s Human Resources Committee.

Dr Al-Omair expressed pleasure over the discovery of new oil fields, explaining that the biggest challenge is the strategy of 2020, which necessitates Kuwait’s production to reach 4 million barrels a day.

There are some oil fields from where it will be difficult to extract oil due to which the ministry has to work on developing the production operations for extracting oil from such locations in a way that will be in line with the strategy.