Why Kuwait’s rulers are being forced to ponder a new pact with big oil

As Saleh al-Ajmi clasps the antiquated little red wheel on oil well B473, the vast, dusty expanse of the world’s second largest oil field unfolds behind him.

“I love Burgan,” the Kuwaiti engineer says with a pride and tenderness usually reserved for girlfriends, not oil fields. But Burgan has earned his devotion. It is perhaps the world’s best-behaved reservoir. It has produced more than 28bn stock tank barrels of oil in the last 60 years with only minimal investment in new technology.
Oil rises to the ground naturally and once there, gravity sends it down Burgan’s gentle slope to the storage tanks below. Mr al-Ajmi and his colleagues have had to do little more than watch and maintain the equipment that was installed by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP) and Gulf Oil (now Chevron) in the 1940s and 1950s and bequeathed to Kuwait when the industry was nationalised in 1975.

But the days of easy oil are over. Even the great Burgan field is beginning to falter and will no longer compensate for stalling oil production in the north of the country, where the oil fields are ageing more quickly. After many years in which it did not have to look beyond its borders for help, the country is being forced to seek the advanced equipment and managerial skills only foreign oil companies can supply.

Financial Times