Democracy will most likely undermine the new $340bn Kuwait energy plan
Posted on 06 April 2011 with 2 comments from readers
Anybody who has been in this region for the past decade knows to treat grandiose Kuwaiti energy development plans with a pinch of salt. Remember the $10 billion Project Kuwait plan that floundered because law makers just could not agree to foreign investment?
That is the problem with democracy in the Arab World. It tends to mess up development plans and leave economies at best stagnant, at worst in decline. Iraq is of course an interesting case study.
$340bn plan
So what are we to make of the $340 billion investment program over 20 years, announced by Hashim al Rifai, managing director of the Kuwait Petroleum Company in Abu Dhabi yesterday? Does the considerable political will required to execute such a massive development plan actually exist?
It would be nice to be more positive and optimistic but who in their right mind could be? We are talking practical business here and serious investment, not day dreaming.
KOC wants to increase Kuwait’s gas output by almost 300 per cent over the next two decades, compared with a 25 per cent rise in oil production capacity, up from 1.2 billion cubic feet per day to four billion. Gas will power domestic power stations, freeing the oil for export. Oil capacity will rise to a sustainable four million barrels per day.
This would mean developing ‘difficult’ gasfields in the north of Kuwait – that are deeply buried and laced with toxic hydrogen sulphide as well as gas reserves in the neutral zone shared by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Democracy rules
These are precisely the actions that proved impossible to get the parliament to approve in the old Project Kuwait. Will it be any different this time?
It must be very frustrating for the technocrats to know exactly what needs to be done to develop a nation’s resources and to have the knowledge and capital available to do it, but then to find a democratic barrier to doing what is right.
This is really a legacy of the Gulf Wars and Kuwait’s promise to the US when they invaded and removed the Iraqi occupation. But it does nothing to help the development of the country or provide necessary energy resources for the world.
2 Comments posted by readers:
If one speaks Arabic fluently one will know that locals in Kuwait are quite racist towards non-locals. I have visited a few times and have some local friends there. When one knows this one knows that Democracy will not exist in Kuwait and neither will they start to foreign investments and foreign ownership. In another generation or two things may change though.
Andy, what you say about democracy not existing in Kuwait, not being able to exist in Kuwait, is in line with my view on where democracy can take root and develop.
My view is that democracy only survives and matures in a society which is a secularised-Christianized society.
This excludes religious societies where religious tribal loyalties torpedo democracy. This includes, not only Muslim societies of today, but also the pre-Enlightenment society in the UK up to and including the Reformation.
I think this current political fervour to “give people the chance to develop their own democracies in their own countries” is doomed to failure. It is political “idolatry” in the sense that anybody, who really understands what’s going on, will certainly bow down to this doctrine of human political development.
On the contrary, Islam will get stronger and stronger in Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq and Libya over time, for examples .