Kuwait Petroleum Corp is to replace its chief executive Sa’ad Al Shuwayeb after declining to offer him a new contract, a local newspaper reported yesterday.
“[Al] Shuwayeb has been verbally informed that he will not get a new term and that he will be sent into retirement,” Al Seyassah newspaper reported, citing government sources.
Al Shuwayeb was appointed to the key post at the country’s national oil conglomerate in 2007, his term expires next month.
He has been in the oil sector for the past three decades, mostly in the petrochemicals segment.
Kuwait’s Oil Minister Shaikh Ahmad Abdullah Al Sabah will nominate a number of candidates to replace Al Shuwayeb but the new KPC chief will be selected by the Supreme Petroleum Council, the highest oil decision-making body, headed by the prime minister.
KPC was first established in 1980 in order to bring together all state-owned elements of the Kuwait oil sector under one corporate umbrella.
Along with its several subsidiaries it controls close to 100 billion barrels of crude oil reserves. Today, KPC overseas a fully-integrated industry with operations spanning six continents.
It brings hydrocarbon energy from its own domestic reservoirs and upstream interests abroad direct to the consumer through a series of specialised subsidiary operating companies.
