Few U.S. Assets in Kuwait Could Be Seized

Threats by Iraq’s new proxy government in Kuwait to nationalize foreign property are not causing undue alarm in the United States: There are few American assets in Kuwait and little foreign investment in the country in general.

State and Commerce department officials in Washington said they could not come up with an estimate of the value of American investment in Kuwait. But federal government sources said the value is considerably less than $1 billion and may amount to no more than a few hundred million dollars.

“I don’t think it’s a large sum,” Elizabeth Dugan, a spokeswoman for the Commerce Department, said.

Dugan said Kuwait has prohibited foreign investment except through joint ventures in which Kuwaitis hold a majority stake. A Commerce Department list includes the names of 57 American companies participating in joint ventures in Kuwait. But many of the ventures are small, and the list is out of date.

Several of the ventures listed actually are only contracts for services, and officials of the American companies involved said in interviews that they do not actually own assets in Kuwait.

For example, both the Boeing Co. and the Douglas Aircraft subsidiary of McDonnell Douglas Corp. are listed as being involved in joint ventures for aviation support services. But spokesmen for both organizations said that although they have small numbers of employees stationed in Kuwait, they do not own property or equipment there.

Officials also said American concerns have virtually no investment in Iraq, which has for some time prohibited foreign investment by non-Arab investors.

An Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia, however, could jeopardize considerably more American assets. William T. Archy, a vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, said that as of 1986, the most recent year for which figures are available, direct American investment in Saudi Arabia was worth $2.4 billion--of which almost $1 billion was directly related to petroleum production. Another large portion of the $2.4 billion represents U.S. petrochemical interests in Saudi Arabia, he said.

Among companies that confirmed Monday that they do own assets in Kuwait are Texaco, the oil company, and Halliburton, an oil-well services company.

Spokeswoman Anita Larsen said Texaco owns a small refinery in Kuwait and a 50% interest in the production of oil in an area known as the “neutral zone,” which straddles the frontier between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Larsen said total production from the area amounts to about 135,000 barrels a day but declined to place a value on Texaco’s interests there.

A spokesman for Halliburton said the company owns equipment in Kuwait “related to our oil field services business.”