Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have resolved a border dispute that has left the Wafra and Khafji oil fields offline for several years. As a result, both of these Neutral Zone sites may resume production within the next year, boosting global output by as much as 500,000 barrels per day.
The US major Chevron said on December 24 that it hoped to bring Wafra, which it operates jointly with Kuwait Gulf Oil Co. (KGOC) on Saudi Arabia’s behalf, back online within 12 months. But a former senior official from KGOC told Reuters that Khafji, a field that the Kuwaiti firm operates jointly with a subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, was likely to be restarted first.
According to Kamel al-Haramy, a Kuwaiti oil market analyst, neither field is likely to yield much oil before mid-2020. “The two countries are not in a rush to resume production from the Neutral Zone oilfields due to the [OPEC-plus] production cuts agreement, so it will take easily up to six months,” he told the news agency.