Kuwait Pumps Oil for 1st Time Since Gulf War

Kuwait has resumed oil production for the first time since its oil wells were set ablaze and its industry devastated during the Gulf War, a senior official said Tuesday.

“We have begun pumping oil at a rate of 25,000 barrels per day--the crude is being stored,” the Kuwait Petroleum Corp. official said by telephone.

He did not say when production had resumed or which fields were pumping.

The company had said last month that pumping was expected to resume by the end of May.

An official of Kuwait National Petroleum Co. said the emirate’s output would rise to 120,000 barrels per day by early August. He said Kuwait’s biggest and least-damaged refinery, Mina al-Ahmadi, would be able to start processing crude by then.

Kuwait exported about 1.5 million barrels per day of oil before Iraq’s invasion Aug. 2. Its three major refineries had a prewar capacity of about 700,000 barrels per day.

Firefighters in Kuwait said last Thursday that 144 of about 600 wells set ablaze by fleeing Iraqi troops had been brought under control, but restoring full production was expected to take up to two years.

The Mina al-Ahmadi refinery, with a prewar capacity of 370,000 barrels per day, was under maintenance during the seven-month occupation and escaped almost unscathed.

Damage to the Shuaiba and Mina Abdullah refineries was more severe. They are not expected to resume production soon.

Kuwaiti officials said all the refined production at Mina al-Ahmadi would be absorbed by domestic demand, now at 120,000 barrels per day. Kuwait was supplementing imports of 70,000 to 80,000 barrels per day of fuel oil, gasoline and diesel fuel from its Gulf neighbors with its own stocks, they said.

The Kuwait Petroleum Corp. official said the emirate was selling on the open market about 540,000 barrels of naphtha stored since before the Iraqi invasion. He denied reports that the company had offered naphtha to Japanese customers in exchange for other refined products.

Kuwaiti officials said last month that they hoped to resume exports of refined products by the end of the year.

Kuwaiti Oil Minister Hamoud Rogba said at the beginning of June that the emirate would sign contracts to double the number of companies fighting the oil well fires, which send an estimated $120 million up in smoke daily.

* U.S. MAY BUY IRANIAN OIL

A Houston firm has received a license to import oil from Iran, which has been embargoed. A1