Kuwait to nationalise 'entire' energy sector by 2021

Kuwait has established “an urgent plan” to nationalise 100 per cent of all the technical, supervisory and executive jobs in the oil sector by January 2021, the country’s state-run Supreme Petroleum Council announced yesterday.

A senior energy official told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the decision had aimed at “preventing the appointment of expatriates for the sector’s main jobs,” adding the government was also aiming at as raising the number of locally-operated contracts with the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) by “80 per cent.”

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The official pointed out that the plan’s implementation would begin “gradually during the second half of this year until reaching the required result before the beginning of the next financial year.” Kuwait’s financial year starts in April of every year.

Kuwait recently said it was planning to reach a production volume of four million barrels per day during the next 20 years, which requires trained and skilled labour to cover the shortage in various specialities.