“The lower the crude price is, the more it will be unattractive to store petroleum abroad,” explained Abdullatif Al-Houti, citing a recent downward trend in international prices. Crude oil fell to a 13-month low in Asia last week on mounting distrust in the future of global financial markets.
Earlier this year, Kuwait Petroleum International (KPI), KPC’s international refining unit, established a joint venture with a major Japanese refiner Idemitsu Kosan Co and two other firms to construct a $6 billion refining and petrochemical complex in northern Vietnam.
According to Al-Houti, in August, KPC signed a contract with the Vietnam-based joint venture to supply 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude for the planned refinery, which is expected to be operational late 2013.
KPI is also leading a joint venture with Asia’s top refiner Sinopec for a 300,000 bpd refinery in China’s southern Guangdong Province. By 2010, China plans to maintain a strategic oil reserve equivalent to 30 days of imported oil, or about 10 million tons.
In October 2006, KPC and the state-run Korea National Oil Corp launched a three-month pilot prgram to stockpile 2 million barrels of crude oil till December, in an attempt to examine how the scheme would work. The deal was South Korea’s first stockpiling agreement with a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Author: Ksenia Kochneva
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No Kuwaiti Crude Oil Bases Abroad
Abdullatif Al-Houti, Managing Director of International Marketing at state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corporation denied speculation that Kuwait has plans to set up strategic oil reserves in China, Vietnam or elsewhere in Asia
