Kuwait agrees in principle to give more diesel to Egypt

An official from Egypt's Petroleum Authority said on Thursday that Kuwait has agreed in principle to raise its annual diesel shipments to Egypt from 800,000 tons to 1.3 billion tons, starting from January. "The Kuwaitis are ready to offer all types of help to Egypt," Tarek al-Mula, the head of the authority, told Anadolu Agency in an interview over the phone. Kuwait has offered Egypt a package of financial aid to the value of $4 billion following the July 3 military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. The package included $2 billion worth of petroleum products and $2 billion of cash deposits in the Egyptian Central Bank. In September, the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation agreed to raise its crude oil shipments to Egypt's oil refineries from 1.5 million barrels a month to 2 million barrels a month. Al-Mula won approval from officials in the Kuwaiti Petroleum Corporation on raising annual diesel shipments during a visit to oil-rich Kuwait last month. Egypt imports around 35 percent of its daily diesel consumption of 35,000-38,000 tons. Al-Mula said official negotiations between his authority and the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation on the diesel shipment increase would take place in December this year. In 2011, Egypt and Kuwait renewed an agreement for importing petroleum products from Kuwait to the value of $2.3 billion in the light of prevalent market prices then. The agreement allows Egypt to repay the price of the imported petroleum within nine months from delivery without interests or extra fees.