Kuwait’s newly appointed oil minister Khaled al-Fadhel has reiterated his commitment to OPEC's output reduction agreement with non-OPEC members to curb oil prices.
In his first comment following his appointment, Fadhel said his country supports all efforts aimed at stabilizing oil market. He said Kuwait is committed to the recent OPEC, non-OPEC agreements made earlier this month, which include a production cut of around 1.2 million barrels per day for six months starting from January.
Kuwait will fully adhere to its share of agreed cuts, which is about three percent, KUNA quoted Fadhel as saying.
He also expected conditions in the oil market to improve in light of the new agreement that will be signed early next year with the growth in global demand.
"The oil market is in a better place today than it was a few years ago," the Kuwaiti minister said, attributing the progress to the "unprecedented" cooperation among key oil producing nations.
He pointed out that Kuwait has chaired the work of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) and Joint Technical Committee (JTC) to monitor the implementation of the agreement to reduce production in 2017 and remains an active member of these committees, indicating that this agreement ends at the end of December.
Fadhel said Kuwait has played a positive and constructive role in supporting the historic reduction agreement between OPEC and non-OPEC top producers that was reached by the end of 2016 and aims to reduce production by 1.8 million barrels per day.
On the other hand, state-run Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) said on Tuesday that Kuwait currently churns out around 180,000 barrels of light crude oil per day (pd) in addition to half a billion cubic feet of free gas.
Light crude oil production is likely to increase to 250,000 barrels per day while gas output is expected to spike to 850 million cubic feet in three years, KOC's director of production operations Ali al-Kanderi said amid a panel discussion to mark Kuwait's first light crude shipment.
As for the distant future, he predicted that crude oil output may reach 3,650 million barrels by the year 2023.
