科威特石油CEO：日产量超200万桶，安全通道恢复可立即增产至270万桶

And for more now on the current situation in the Strait Of Hormuz and the energy picture in The Middle East as a whole, we turn now to an important conversation as Bloomberg's Romaine Bostick sits down with the CEO of Kuwait Petroleum. Romaine? Yeah. Thank you very much, Kailey. We're here with SSheikh Nawaf Saud Nasir Al-Sabah, of course, the CEO of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation at a time where we're talking about all of this potential discussions of maybe some sort of de escalation, a conflict that is now well into its eighth month.

The Strait Of Hormuz shut down for most of that time, and now we're starting to see Iran start to hit a lot more targets further south of that in the Gulf Of Oman, and that has affected your shipments in and out of Kuwait. What measures have you taken to try to find alternative routes? I mean, we have, started since the beginning of this conflict. We have made clear to our customers around the world that we will do everything possible to ensure that shipments continue to our customers.

When the straight did not have any passage going through, we used our trading arm and we we used our... Everything at our disposal to make sure that alternative shipments made it to our customers. Now that shipping is going through Mhmm. We are committed to raising our production as high as as we can to accommodate the requirements of our customers. So we are working through the straight. Uh-huh. And looking into the future, we'll look into alternatives and and such as pipelines.

But are the ship to ship transfers that you've been doing, is that still actually working? That is continuing. That is working. We've been able to move our production from almost nothing really during the height of the of the crisis to well over 2,000,000 barrels a day, and our fields and our facilities are resilient. They can handle that. The... What is missing right now is additional security for ships to transit through the strait so that we can raise raise our production to what it was before this crisis began at 2,700,000 barrels a day.

When you say that you're meeting your obligations, is that 100% of what your customers are asking for they're getting, or are you still having to sort of, make concessions? On the crude side, we are. On the crude, oil side, we are exporting, basically what we had been doing before the war began. We're meet... Meeting the requirements of our customers on crude oil. It's on, product where shipping is more constrained for products, and that's where we had to restrain some of our refining capacity on that.

And you're seeing that result in international diesel and and jet fuel prices. One of the biggest refineries in the world that produces jet and diesel is actually in Kuwait. We need more product carriers to come into the into The Gulf to carry that product out. So so is the main constraint on the refined products right now getting the tankers that you need or getting a safe escort of those tankers in and out? It's both because once you have safe escort Mhmm.

More and more tankers from the international community will come. What we're doing right now is using our strategic tanker fleet to shuttle, crude and product out through the strike, do ship to ship transfer outside, and move it to our customers outside, Lukka. You've taken some damage to some of your tankers because of this war. Have you been able to repair and replace those in an efficient manner? We have, we're doing everything we can, to move, the shipments out.

That that is replace... That is, repairing, the tankers that have been hit. Some of those are are back in service. Others are in the process, going through dry dry dock. Have you asked the US military for more help on the naval side? The US military has been, fantastic in in supporting us all the way through. It was very clear to us from the beginning that there is nothing that is a 100% effective, that we will continue, we will absorb some hits, but it is a risk that we are taking.

But we're out... Also asking the international community, asking our customers, to bear a greater portion of that responsibility, and move ships to, work with us on the, on the risks that we're taking. Why haven't we seen that yet? You're starting to see that, in fact. Our customers are now, coming into The Gulf, supporting us with, with the shipping and, starting to collect product from Kuwait. Are these primarily customers in Europe and Asia?

These customers are in Asia. We're asking our European customers to do the same. Mhmm. And, they're working with their with their governments to ensure that they can come up through The Gulf. I know that you're not actually involved in any sort of peace negotiations, but there's been a lot of rumors about a potential de escalation. Are you aware of any progress on that front? I'm not aware of that. What we do is we ensure that we can get as much of our shipments out, to our to our customers, and, we let the politicians sort out the rest.

If there were... Was a deal anytime soon, how quickly could you ramp up production and, more importantly, delivery of that production back up to that 2.6 barrels that we saw prior to the war? Immediate. Immediate. Our facilities are are available, ready to work. Our fields are more resilient than ever. This is a testament to not only Kuwait's ability, but KPC's ability to produce. We... What... The only thing that's missing, honestly, is an exit route Mhmm.

For for product. You've talked about refined products already being at critical levels. There has been some relief that Kuwait has actually taken credit for with regards to getting some of that product back to market. How involved were you in getting that diesel and the other refined products over? Absolutely. We're we're prioritizing getting these products out into the market, especially because, diesel and jet fuel is facing a severe shortage.

And as I said, it's... A lot of that shortage is due to the fact that you have about 6,000,000 barrels of refining capacity inside The Gulf. Mhmm. Much of that is being restrained because of the inability to move it safely out. The pipelines that exist through Saudi Arabia and, The Emirates are crude. So that's why you're seeing a relatively muted reaction on crude prices, but a huge reaction, on product prices because there's simply not enough, product moving into the market.

Well, your involvement certainly allowed for the European, release of their reserves. Have you been asked to do more by The United States to get more refined products here? We are working with our US partners to move as much as we can. We... The the point remains that there is no substitute for safe transit through the Strait Of Hormuz. That needs to be restored as quickly as possible. Once that happens, you will have product moving at a much briskier phase.

Long term, there's been a lot of talk about finding alternatives to the Strait Of Hormuz. I know there's been a lot of talk about studying export pipelines that you've been in with Saudi Arabia as well as The UAE. Are those talks still going on? How much progress are you making towards that? We're making a lot of progress on those. But again, pipelines can only carry crude at this point. So you can solve for one portion of the problem, but you cannot solve for the fact that not only the 20% of of the world's crude goes through the Strait Of Hormuz.

Mhmm. You can do pipelines around that, but you can't do pipelines for the product that that is missing, the 6,000,000 or more barrels of refined product that goes through. You're also missing 20% of the world's LNG has to go out on ships. It can't go out on pipelines. It's gotta go through the strait. And finally, somewhere between a third... A quarter to a third of, the world's fertilizer comes through the strait, that's gotta come on ships.

And that's just from the energy side, not counting, commercial goods and everything else. So there is no substitute for safe passage