Wealthy OPEC nation Kuwait said on Sunday it is donating $500 million in oil products and other humanitarian aid to its ally the United States to ease severe shortages caused by Hurricane Katrina.
“The humanitarian aid is oil products that the devastated (U.S.) states need in these circumstances, plus other humanitarian aid to lessen the devastation these three states have been subjected to,” Energy Minister Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah told state news agency KUNA.
He said the aid gesture was a duty towards a friend by the tiny Gulf Arab state which was liberated in 1991 by a U.S.-led multinational coalition from seven months of Iraqi occupation.
Sheikh Ahmad, who is also OPEC’s chief, said in a separate statement that the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries was working hard to stabilise high oil prices. He reiterated that the 11 cartel members were currently producing 30.4 million barrels per day to build stockpiles to help ease prices.
“This output is more than the market needs, in order to build the strategic or commercial crude oil or refined products stockpiles so that that will stabilise prices,” he said, adding there was oversupply of over one million bpd in the market.
On Saturday, OPEC’s Acting Secretary-General Adnan Shihab-Eldin said some OPEC members like Kuwait and others could reschedule refinery maintenance or release products from commercial stocks to help ease supply problems caused by Hurricane Katrina.
“I know for sure Kuwait is looking at that ... I’m sure (Venezuela) is looking at what else they can do in this respect,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of a business conference in Italy.
OPEC said on Friday it was considering further measures to help ease problems caused by Katrina.
Iran said on Sunday that OPEC could decide to lift production by as much as one million barrels per day at its meeting in Vienna on Sept. 19 in a bid to stabilize oil markets.
Speaking after the weekly cabinet session in Kuwait City, Sheikh Ahmad also offered the sympathies of Kuwait’s leadership and people over the catastrophe that befell the three U.S. southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and which took out about 10 percent of U.S. refining capacity.
Katrina caused severe shortages of refined petroleum products like gasoline as eight U.S. Gulf Coast refineries with a combined daily refining capacity of about 1.8 million barrels of crude oil were knocked out.
“We see it as our duty as Kuwaitis to stand beside our friends to ease this humanitarian crisis and to express our gratitude for the many stands in which Washington has supported us throughout the history of the special ties between the two friendly nations,” Sheikh Ahmad noted.
Sheikh Ahmad lauded what he called the “honorable stand of the United States during the (1990) Iraqi invasion of the state of Kuwait as they contributed with the blood of their sons ... which is the dearest thing to them.”
The Kuwaiti minister also said that U.S. forces provided protection to Kuwaiti oil tankers during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Kuwait controls nearly a tenth of global oil reserves, produces crude at a rate of 2.6 million barrels per day and has three refineries with a maximum processing capacity of 930,000 barrels per day.
The Gulf state was used as the launchpad for the 2003 U.S.-led war in Iraq which ousted Iraqi leader and Kuwait’s former occupier Saddam Hussein. Kuwait is home to more than 13,000 American civilians and about 25,000 U.S. servicemen.