Since 1946, Kuwait Has Extracted 51 Billion Barrels Of Oil

Kuwait's oil production has been 51.8 billion barrels since the first shipment in 1946 until the end of the first quarter of this year, with an estimated two billion barrels of oil burned and/or 'wasted' during the Iraqi invasion, bringing the total oil extracted from Kuwaiti oil fields to 53.8 billion barrels.

According to a historical survey prepared by a local Arabic daily based on annual OPEC statistics and the British Petroleum Company BP archives, Kuwait's highest daily production was in the early 1970s, specifically in 1972, when daily production reached 3.35 million barrels, the highest in Kuwait's history, and it has not been reached since, while the lowest production was in 1991, with 190,000 barrels per day.

It's worth noting that prices were set by major foreign oil corporations in accordance with concession agreements with the government between 1946 and 1975 when the Kuwait Oil Company was wholly owned by the Kuwaiti government.

The numbers for Kuwaiti oil output from 1960 to 2022 are based on Kuwait's OPEC membership, and they include production from the partitioned zone.

During the 1940s and 1950s, the seven major oil firms, including Exxon, Mobil, Shell, and British BP, had complete control over oil prices. Kuwaiti crude oil revenues at the time were determined by concession agreements signed between Kuwait and several companies in 1934, 1948, 1949, 1958, 1961, and amendments to those agreements, according to which Kuwait received between 3 Indian rupees per English tonne and 2.5 dollars per English tonne from the sale of its oil, depending on the concession agreement, These agreements were changed multiple times to increase the proportion of returns until the oil businesses were nationalized and foreign companies were reimbursed in 1975 so that the sale of oil passed into the hands of Kuwaitis and the oil income were totally unique to Kuwait.

The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation was able to sell its oil at a price one and a half dollars higher than its Saudi counterpart (Arab medium) and two dollars more than its Iranian equivalent (Iran heavy) in the mid-1980s, but the scenario did not continue long due to changeable market conditions.

The history of Kuwait's oil

– In 1934, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now known as BP, and Gulf Oil, now known as Chevron, formed the Kuwait Oil Company Limited.

- The Burgan field yielded commercial quantities of oil in 1938.

— The late Amir of the State of Kuwait, HH Sheikh Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, launched Kuwait's first crude oil export shipment in June 1946.

– The Kuwait Oil Company was taken over by the Kuwaiti government in 1975, and the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation was formed in 1980 to incorporate all state-owned oil firms.

– The Iraqi invasion in 1990 devastated the company's facilities, but production gradually recovered to full capacity within months of Kuwait's independence in February 1991.

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