KUWAIT CITY, 7 June 2005 — Iran hopes to strike a “final deal” with Kuwait this year on a decades-old dispute over their maritime border in a rich offshore gas field, a senior envoy said here yesterday.
“There are still issues over which we have not reached a final solution,” said the envoy, Hassan Rowhani, who heads Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
“But I believe that the largest portion related to the continental shelf is on the verge of being decided. I hope that we will reach a final deal during this year.”
Rowhani was speaking after a two-day visit to Kuwait during which he held talks with Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah.
The dispute goes back to the 1960s when Iran and Kuwait awarded offshore concessions to the former Anglo-Iranian Petroleum Co, now part of BP, and Royal Dutch Shell that overlap in the northern part of the Dorra field.
Recoverable gas reserves from Dorra are estimated at some 200 billion cubic meters (seven trillion cubic feet), with potential daily output of between 17 million and 43 million cubic meters (600 million and 1.5 billion cubic feet).
Kuwait is rich in oil but badly needs the Dorra field because it lacks sufficient supplies of natural gas. In March, the two countries signed a seven-billion-dollar 25-year deal under which Iran will supply some nine million cubic meters of natural gas a day to the emirate. Delivery is scheduled to begin in 2007.
