Kuwait's New Oil And Gas Strategy Copies Saudi Arabia's: Produce And Refine -- July 31, 2015

Read this story in light of recent reports that Saudi Arabia has taken a strategic turn from producing and exporting oil, to producing and refining oil. Now it's Kuwait:

Kuwait National Petroleum Co. has let a series of contracts to groups of oil and gas service providers to build the planned 615,000-b/d Al-Zour refinery complex in southern Kuwait as part of the company’s Clean Fuels Project.

KNPC officially awarded four contract packages worth an estimated $11.5 billion for the grassroots refinery on July 28, with a fifth contract package due to be awarded in the coming weeks, the state-run company confirmed in a series of posts to its social media accounts.

KNPC let a $4.1 billion lump-sum turnkey contract to a consortium of Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas SA, China’s Sinopec Engineering (Group) Co. Ltd., and Hanwha Engineering & Construction Corp. of South Korea to provide engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning for main processing units at the plan.

Note the contractors: Spain, China, and South Korea.

I guess America's job is to provide security while Kuwait gets the necessary engineering from Europe and Asia. Incredible.

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 Are Refineries Worth It?

MPC just raised its dividend from 25 cents to 32 cents.

PSX: Phillips 66 beats by $0.02; increases quarterly dividend 12% to $0.56/share.

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A Note For The Archives

A few weeks ago when we were out in California, I was talking to my brother-in-law about the Bakken. Unbeknownst to me, our 12-year-old granddaughter was taking notes on our conversation, but in a "graphic" way.

She was using the back of a Yahtzee score sheet. Today, when opening up one of the books I had started reading out in California, the drawing fell out. I annotated it to highlight some of the things she noted from our little discussion.