KUWAIT - Decision Makers: Shaikh Ahmad Al Fahd Al Ahmad Al Sabah.

The Acting Oil Minister and Minister of Information, Shaikh Ahmad is a nephew of both the Emir Shaikh Jabir and the SPC Chairman Shaikh Sabah. His father, Shaikh Fahd, was killed while fighting Iraqi invaders at the emiri palace in August 1990. Then Shaikh Ahmad was head of Kuwait's Olympic committee and of the football society.

Shaikh Ahmad was made information minister in the 1990s. He took up the additional petroleum portfolio in February 2002 after the resignation of Adel Khalid Al Subaih following an explosion which seriously damaged the Raudhatain oilfield in the north and killed four people. The blast was triggered by a leak from a crude oil pipeline which spread to a power plant and caused the field's production to be suspended.

(Appointed as oil minister on Feb. 14, 2001, Subaih until then was minister of electricity and water. An Islamist now aged 50, Subaih is an engineer educated in the US.

(The Raudhatain explosion was followed by an accident at the Shuaiba oil refinery which damaged a hydrocracking unit. Subaih blamed both accidents and previous oil fires on "prominent figures" who gave relatives or friends executive positions in the petroleum sector. Without mentioning names, he said "the presence of one single untrained and unqualified person can lead to oil accidents and fires". Subaih added that, although KPC's charter called for the firm to be run on commercial lines, the company had many unqualified executives brought in by powerful relatives. He also pointed to government and parliamentary interference in the petroleum sector - see his background in Vol. 56, No. 25).

As in the case of Shaikh Saud Al Nasser, who had been brought in to reinforce the oil ministry and KPC in the late 1990s, Shaikh Ahmad Al Fahd was given this portfolio to speed up the process of involving multi-national companies in Kuwait's upstream sector. In December 1998, Shaikh Saud had established a committee to examine recommended options for foreign companies to develop Kuwait's oilfields under a 20/25-year "incentivised buy-back contract" (IBBC). This had been worked out with the help of Coopers & Lybrand and approved by the SPC as an alternative to a production sharing agreement (PSA) or concessions, prohibited by the current constitution's Article 152.

Now Shaikh Ahmad chairs the committee and hopes the IBBC would be passed before end-2003 by a parliament to be elected on July 6. The committee's other key members include Sultan, KPC deputy chairman and CEO; and Arbeed, CEO of KOC.

In mid-2001, Subaih had got the oil ministry to resume its role as the main state institution in charge of oil policy. He had restructured the ministry into four main sections: (1) finance & administration, (2) an economic department, (3) a technical unit, and (4) data and media. Since then the ministry has been more effective in monitoring Kuwait's petroleum and overseeing the sector.

In August 2001 Saud Abdullah Ahmad Al Farhan and Ali Sabit Mohammed Bin Sabit were appointed as assistant under-secretaries at the ministry with each having a four-year term. Issa Al Aoun, the under-secretary, says the new parliament will approve the IBBC model before end-2003.

In OPEC ministerial meetings, Shaikh Ahmad follows the Saudi line. After their latest conference in Doha, Qatar, on June 11, when the OPEC oil ministers decided to keep the oil production and quotas unchanged until they meet again on July 31 to review the situation, Shaikh Ahmad told reporters no action was taken because of uncertainty on when Iraq will return to the oil market. There will be another OPEC ministerial meeting on Sept. 24. With strong US gasoline demand keeping world crude oil prices high, the value of OPEC's basket of seven crude oils is well above the average of $25/b in its $22-28/b price band. Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi says OPEC must keep defending oil prices at an average of $25/b.