A nation-wide blackout hit Kuwait on Sunday, forcing it to shut its three oil refineries and halt exports of refined products like gasoline, but crude production and exports were proceeding normally, top energy officials said. The power outage affected most regions of the small Gulf country of 2.5 million people, energy ministry officials said.
Opec nation Kuwait controls nearly 10 percent of global oil reserves and produces crude oil at 2.5 million barrels per day.
The power cut hit traffic lights across the country, causing bumper-to-bumper traffic jams on some roads leading out of the capital. Some civilians were seen trying to direct traffic at a major roundabout in the capital.
Power had been restored to about 50 percent of the country by late afternoon and officials said it was expected to return to the rest of Kuwait within hours.
"The production and exporting of petroleum from Kuwait is proceeding normally and (crude) production operations were not impacted at all," Hani Hussain, the deputy chairman of Kuwait Petroleum Corp (KPC), told state news agency KUNA.
The outage was due to a technical fault that occurred at 12.35 pm during routine maintenance works at al-Umariya, one of several power stations in Kuwait.
The country's three sprawling coastal refineries in southern Kuwait were shut as a precautionary measure, and exports of refined petroleum products such as gasoline, jet fuel or heating oil were temporarily halted.
"All three refineries are in the process of being shut down after the electric current went out," Sami Rushaid, the chairman and managing director of state-run Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC), told Reuters.
KPC's Hussain said power had been restored at all three refineries and that the plants were now in the process of being restarted.
But he did not specify how long it would take to bring the plants fully back on stream.
The facilities have a total refining capacity of 930,000 bpd. Shutting down and restarting such large complexes usually takes hours and sometimes days.
The remarks from KPC's Hussain were echoed by Energy Minister Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah on KUNA and state radio.
For his part, Rushaid said the situation at the three refining complexes was being assessed and it was still not clear when they would be restarted.
"We will evaluate the situation and will then decide when to restart the refineries," added Rushaid, whose KNPC runs the downstream sector comprising the 460,000-bpd Mina Ahmadi, 270,000-bpd Mina Abdullah and 200,000-bpd Shuaiba refineries.
On the temporary halt to exports of refined oil products, Rushaid told Reuters: "When the electricity returns, we will resume the exports operations, God willing."
Sheikh Ahmad, the energy minister, was quoted on Sunday evening by state radio as saying that power had been restored to 50 percent of the country, adding that most other areas were likely to get power back within a few hours.
But he said al-Umariya, where the outage began, would lag other areas until work there was completed.
Reuters witnesses said power began returning to some areas of the capital by mid-afternoon but other areas were still without a current. Some mobile telephone communications were also affected.
Energy Ministry Under-secretary Saud al-Zaid told KUNA that the ministry was investigating the causes of the malfunction.
Ministry personnel are working to restart al-Zoor and al-Shuaiba power stations in southern Kuwait, which need a few hours' work, he added. As a result of the outage, units went down at al-Zoor, and at Subiya, Doha West and Doha East stations north-west of Kuwait city, Zaid added.
KUNA also quoted an interior ministry official as saying that no security incidents were caused by the outage, adding that police patrols were present at all major roads and many areas to guard against any incidents.
"The situation is very normal," the official said.
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