Kuwaiti oil reserves higher than announced

Oil reserves in Kuwait’s largest oilfield, Burgan, are higher than have been published and new figures for all reservoirs are to be announced soon, a minister said on Thursday.

“Reserves in Burgan oilfield are much higher than what is being circulated,” deputy premier for economic affairs Shaikh Ahmad Fahad al-Sabah was cited as saying by the official KUNA news agency.

Greater Burgan oilfield is the world’s second largest field after Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, with reserves previously estimated at around 70 billion barrels.

It has been producing about three-quarters of Kuwait’s output of 2.2 million bpd.

“New figures for the reserves in all Kuwaiti oil reservoirs will be made public soon,” KUNA quoted Shaikh Ahmad as telling an oil conference.

Al-Qabas daily quoted the minister as telling the same conference that “we will announce good news for the Kuwaiti people” about the oil reserves which have been disputed in the past few years.

OPEC member Kuwait has maintained that its crude reserves are around 100 billion barrels, without saying how much of it is proven.

Industry newsletter Petroleum Intelligence Weekly (PIW) said in January 2006 that Kuwait’s oil reserves stood at 48 billion barrels, based on internal records seen by the newsletter.

The PIW report also claimed that Kuwait’s fully proven reserves amounted to only 24.2 billion barrels.

At the time, Kuwaiti oil officials said the report was inaccurate and that it failed to take into account undeveloped reservoirs.

Kuwait’s claimed 100 billion barrels mark the world’s fifth largest deposits after those of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates.