Kuwait Taps Banks to Reassess Oil Output Plan

Kuwait has hired banks Morgan Stanley and Lazard to help the Gulf state reassess how it should go about developing several oil fields that are key to boosting its long-term oil supplies, Kuwait’s oil minister told Dow Jones Newswires Thursday.

The banks have been enlisted to assess the costs – originally put at around $8.5 billion – and the extent to which international oil companies should participate in the long-standing and much-delayed oil production plan known as Project Kuwait.

“Morgan Stanley and Lazard are helping us,” said Sheikh Ali al-Jarrah al-Sabah in an interview on the sidelines of an energy conference in the Egyptian capital.

The banks’ findings should be completed “at some point” in 2007, Sheikh Ali added.

Dow Jones Newswires