KUWAIT: VULNERABILITY OF KEY FOREIGN OIL SUPPLIERS

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 04 KUWAIT 004400

SIPDIS

STATE FOR S/CT, EB/ESC/IEC, INR/EC, DS/ITA
LONDON FOR TSOU
ENERGY FOR MWILLIAMSON, JGELSTHORPE, AWOMACK
NSC FOR CHASE HUTTO

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/15/2015
TAGS: EPET ETRD EWWT KHLS PTER ASEC KU OIL SECTOR
SUBJECT: KUWAIT: VULNERABILITY OF KEY FOREIGN OIL SUPPLIERS

REF: SECSTATE 182688

Classified By: Deputy Chief of Mission Matthew Tueller for reason 1.4 (
b) and (d)


1. (S) Summary and Comment: The flow of oil from Kuwait
remains vulnerable to disruption by terrorist attack,
accident or natural disaster, with the off-shore loading
platforms and facilities being the most vulnerable. The
onshore Mina Al-Ahmadi facilities are considered a restricted
zone and are somewhat protected, while the offshore loading
platform and piers remain highly vulnerable, despite the
existence of an offshore "no-entry" zone. A Single Buoy
Mooring (SBM),located about three miles offshore from Mina
Al-Ahmadi, is in a restricted area but is vulnerable to an
attack by small boats.


2. (S) The GOK coordinates protection of its oil
infrastructure through a Vital Installations Security Group,
headed by the Director General of Kuwait State Security and
comprised of representatives from various GOK ministries and
the oil sector. A disruption to Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery
would stop approximately 440,000 bpd of crude from being
refined each day. An attack on the export facilities at Mina
Al-Ahmadi would take approximately 2 million bpd of crude and
refined product off the world market. Other vulnerable
facilities include the other two refineries, the pipelines
connecting the oilfields to the refineries and export
terminals, the gathering centers, the tank storage farms, the
petrochemicals plants and desalination plants.


3. (C) Comment: The proximity of oil infrastructure
facilities to U.S. military facilities in Kuwait should
remain an issue of concern and calls for increased vigilance
over security plans by the GOK for its oil infrastructure. A
number of accidents over the past few years have demonstrated
that neglect is perhaps a bigger danger than attack, but the
real possibility of an attack on Kuwait's oil facilities
remains. It is clear that the GOK has incident plans and has
done vulnerability assessments, but the real questions are
how often these plans are tested, how prepared the GOK would
be for a real incident, and how seriously it takes the
recommendations of any assessment. End Summary and Comment.

Vulnerability Assessments: An Inside View
--------------


4. (C) Econ Officer met October 11 with Kuwait National
Petroleum Company (KNPC) Manager for Safety, Health and
Environment Mohammed Al-Ramadhan and KNPC Coordinator for
Safety at the Mina Al-Ahmadi Refinery AbdulHameed Al-Awadi.
They explained that the GOK conducts vulnerability
assessments on a regular basis, and that these assessments
include the Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery and export facilities.
The assessments have been undertaken internally by KNPC, by
the parent Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC),and by outside
consultants, including Global Village Strategies
(http://www.gv-s.com) and AustroConsult
(http://www.austroconsult.at). The challenge for Kuwait
seems to remain in actually implementing any recommendations
that follow such assessments.


5. (C) Although the assessments are not publicly available,
the two KNPC employees did share the fact that all
vulnerability assessments performed thus far agree that the
point most vulnerable to attack is from the sea. The piers,
the refineries and the offshore loading platforms are all
highly vulnerable to an attack by small boat. This
assessment tracks with what we have consistently heard from
other sources.


6. (S) In July 2005, RSO was provided with a verbal briefing
from a contact at the British Embassy. The contact passed an
assessment performed by a British security firm that had
conducted a security survey for the Kuwait Oil Company in
June 2005. The security company found that much of the KOC
infrastructure - including the fields, pipelines and
buildings - was either badly protected or not protected at
all. The report assessed that Kuwait's oil infrastructure
was extremely vulnerable to terrorist attack. The specific
physical security problems cited in the report included:

-- Security Fences: varied greatly in quality and standard of
maintenance.
-- Buildings: Security of doors and windows is poor, enabling
easy penetration.
-- Access Control: Current access control systems are widely
circumvented or abused.
-- Intruder Detection: Lack of effective intruder detection
systems.
-- ID Cards: Current ID cards have no expiration date,
allowing former employees access to KOC premises.
-- CCTV: Very few CCTV systems, many of those in place did
not work due to lack of maintenance.
-- Guards: Only 14 of the 373 sites in a database of KOC
sites had full-time guards.
-- Pipelines: Much of the pipeline is totally unprotected.
The North-South pipeline, for example, which carries 800,000
bpd, and the Western pipeline, which carries potentially
lethal levels of hydrogen sulfide, are both unprotected.


7. (S) The security firm report noted that there would be no
effective changes in the security posture of KOC until there
was effective apportionment of responsibility between the
Ministry of Energy, the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC),
and KOC. The report assessed KOC overall security to be
"extremely weak," and indicated that an attack could easily
be mounted, with little organization or training, against the
pipelines. It continued that a more organized and determined
group might prefer to attack the Single Buoy Mooring (SBM),
destroying or damaging not only the tankers and buoy, but
also the under-sea pipeline.

Preventive Actions Taken: Committees, CCTV Upgrades, No-Entry
Zones
-------------- --------------


8. (S) Preventive actions include the formation of a number
of committees, upgrading of physical security procedures and
equipment, establishment of a no-entry offshore zone, and the
formation of a new security services company under the KPC
umbrella. Most preventive actions appear to be in response
to risk assessments that have been conducted, while some
actions appear to be responding to attacks on oil company
facilities in Saudi Arabia, threats from Iraq, and other
external factors. "The budget is there," one KNPC contact
told us, but it is our opinion that Kuwait needs to find the
will to implement the necessary changes and may not fully do
so until after an attack or accident.


9. (S) The GOK has established a Vital Installations
Security Group (VISG),which is ultimately responsible for
protection of all vital oil industry facilities. The Group
is headed by Kuwait State Security Director General Othbi
Fahd Al-Ahmad Al-Fahd Al-Sabah, brother of the Minister of
Energy. The VISG is part of an inter-ministerial committee
which reports to the Council of Ministers on protection of
the oil infrastructure. According to Al-Ramadhan of KNPC,
the VISG patrols some of the oil facilities. Within KPC, he
explained, each subsidiary is responsible for its own
security, meaning that KOC is responsible for the upstream
security, while KNPC is responsible for the downstream, and
the other subsidiaries are responsible for the security in
the areas under their purview. Al-Ramadhan explained that
there is an office at the parent KPC organization that tries
to coordinate security among all the oil companies, and that
the security officers at each company get together for
monthly meetings. A new security services subsidiary company
of KPC would be formed before the end of the year, he added,
and this company would take over all security functions of
the entire GOK-owned oil sector.


10. (S) Al-Awadi and Al-Ramadhan of KNPC said that a number
of recommendations from the AustroConsult security audit were
being carried out now, with a number of ongoing projects.
CCTVs are being installed around all the refineries, they
explained, with over 250 new cameras to be installed and
monitored from a central control room. New road barriers and
entrance barriers would be installed at critical entrances.
The Ministry of Interior currently conducts background checks
on new employees, but the two KNPC officers implied that
these background checks were only done on foreigners "with
Arab names." One of the security consultants, Global Village
Strategies, was being given a new contract to provide
additional security training for KNPC personnel.


11. (S) According to Al-Ramadhan (and other sources),a
no-entry zone has been established in the port and offshore
area, including the north and south piers, the "Sea Island",
and the Single Buoy Mooring. Al-Awadi showed Econ Officer a
map of this zone, with clear path outside the zone for
fishing and commercial vessels that need to reach the nearby
ports. They explained that the Kuwait Coast Guard currently
patrols this zone and makes arrests when people violate the
no-entry order. The Coast Guard currently uses boat-based
radar, but radar will now be installed on a number of buoys
in the no-entry zone in order to automatically detect
intrusions. The KNPC officials said that fishermen and
recreational boaters were aware of the no-entry zone and, for
the most part, steered clear. They added that a new patrol
team equipped with Zodiac boats is being set up in the nearby
Mina Al-Abdullah area and that these boats would patrol the
entire no-entry zone.

Impact of a Disruption at Mina Al-Ahmadi
--------------


12. (SBU) The Mina Al-Ahmadi facilities include a refinery,
the north and south loading piers, the Sea Island loading
platform, the Single Buoy Mooring (SBM),pipelines, storage
facilities, and office buildings. Mina Al-Ahmadi is located
about 45 km south of Kuwait City. The refinery contains
three crude oil distillation units with a total capacity of
442,000 bpd. It also contains a number of other units of
smaller capacity for other uses, including benzene treatment,
sulfur elimination, vacuum distillation, hydrogen cracking,
coefficient cracking, Eocene crude distillation, asphalt
production, and removal of acidic gasses. The refinery was
originally built in 1949 and was upgraded in the 1980's. Any
attack or accident at Mina Al-Ahmadi would stop about 430,000
bpd of crude being refined each day, the actual average daily
amount passing through the refinery over the past two years.



13. (SBU) The bigger impact would be a disruption in the
export capabilities of Kuwait through the facilities at Mina
Al-Ahmadi. Given the agreement that Kuwait is most
vulnerable to an attack from the sea, this is a serious
concern. The south pier at Mina Al-Ahmadi has eight berths
varying in depth from 12 to 15 meters, and the north pier has
four berths with a depth of 18 meters. The Sea Island is a
loading platform with six docking platforms with a 30 meter
depth, and the SBM is connected by undersea pipeline to the
Sea Island. Industry contacts and other sources estimate
that with these facilities, Kuwait can export almost 2
million bpd. Al-Ramadhan and Al-Awadi of KNPC assured Econ
Officer that Kuwait could find other means of export if these
facilities were damaged, including the use of tanker trucks.
(Comment: We remain skeptical.)


14. (SBU) A network of pipelines transfers crude oil to the
storage centers in Ahmadi and these pipelines are, for the
most part, unprotected. From the southern reservoir farm in
Ahmadi, crude is supplied to the Ahmadi Refinery via 24 inch
pipeline. The refinery has 3 reservoirs for temporary crude
storage with a capacity of 600,000 barrels, and export
reservoirs with a capacity of 6 million barrels.

Other Vulnerable Facilities
--------------


15. (SBU) Besides the refinery at Mina Al-Ahmadi, there are
two other existing refineries in Kuwait - Mina Abdullah and
Shuaiba Refinery. We doubt that either of these facilities
has any additional protection beyond what is available at
Mina A-Ahmadi. The pipelines running throughout the country
remain highly vulnerable to attack, as do the gathering
centers and other facilities. The tank farms and other
storage facilities are also vulnerable. Within Kuwait's
growing petrochemical industry, the EQUATE petrochemical
plant and associated facilities will be a point of concern,
as will be two new petrochemical plants scheduled to come
online by 2008.


16. (SBU) Recent incidents on Kuwait's northern border with
Iraq highlight the need for Kuwait to improve its security
for the northern oilfields and its cooperation with Iraq
security forces in securing the border. The desalination
plants, while not directly part of the oil industry, could be
easily affected by any offshore oilspill and could seriously
impact Kuwait's supply of fresh water. Additionally, there
is little protection to KPC and subsidiary company buildings
throughout the country, and it is quite easy to walk into
some of them without being stopped. We have seen some
improvement in this area over the past year, but more needs
to be done.


17. (SBU) Finally, the facilities in the divided zone
between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the Mina Saud facilities,
remain vulnerable to potential attacks, especially from the
sea. These facilities include the Wafra, South Fuwaris,
South Umm Gudair and Humma oilfields, the pipelines
connecting these fields to the gathering center, 50 km of
pipeline connecting Wafra to Mina Saud, ten storage tanks,
and the undersea pipeline and offshore loading platform. The
divided zone oil facilities are run by a joint operation
between the Kuwait Gulf Oil Company and Saudi Arabian Texaco
Inc. (SAT),a division of Chevron which operates the Saudi
portion of the joint operation on behalf of the KSA. We have
spoken numerous times with SAT officials about the security
of their facilities, including the residential compound
housing about 40 American families. SAT utilizes radar to
detect any vessels on the water in the area. /SAT has a good
internal security program, but is trying to get the GOK to do
more to secure the area outside of the SAT compound. Thus
far, however, they have been largely unsucessful. The RSO
met with several officials at SAT and Chevron, discussing
these vulnerabilities at length. Resource shortfalls and
lack of committment to mitigate these risks plagues efforts
to address these concerns.

View from the IOCs
--------------


18. (C) Econ Officer has spoken with numerous Kuwait-based
executives of international oil companies (IOCs) concerning
Kuwait's preparedness for any natural disaster or attack
involving its oil infrastructure. None of the executives
found Kuwait's preparation for any such event particularly
impressive, and most said that Kuwait would quickly turn to
the IOCs for help in the aftermath of any incident. One
contact declared that he and his company would definitely not
rely on any plans developed by the GOK or KPC for the safety
of himself and his colleagues, and that he had an alternative
plan ready. He also said that, when IOCs are asked for
recommendations on safety and security procedures and provide
such advice, no feedback or follow-up questions come from the
Kuwaitis. Other IOC executives have told us that some people
within the GOK operate under the assumption that the U.S.
Navy is protecting Kuwait's offshore oil facilities

Kuwait Oilfield Maps
--------------


19. (U) Numerous oilfield maps of Kuwait are available on
Embassy Kuwait's SIPRNet site:
(http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/kuwait/). Please visit our
site and in the "Picture Galleries" box on the left side of
the page, scroll down in the box and click on "Oilfield Maps".

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LEBARON