Kuwait crude price above USD 100 pb mark in first half of FY

Kuwaiti crude price remained above the USD 100 per barrel mark over the first half of the current fiscal year 2011/2012 ending September 30, except for September 26 when fell to USD 99.16 per barrel, a specialized economic report showed Saturday. The report, issued by Al-Shall Economic Consultants, said that the average Kuwaiti oil price for most of September scored about USD 104.2 per barrel, with a slight decrease by about USD 0.3 per barrel over August average of USD 104.5 per barrel. As such, average Kuwaiti oil price for the first half of this fiscal year amounted to about USD 107.8 per barrel, an increase by about USD 47.8 per barrel (79.7 percent) over the hypothetical budget estimated price at USD 60 per barrel, which will be reflected positively on budget oil revenues, the report noted. Noting that April's average price at about USD 115.6 per barrel was the highest average price for the Kuwaiti oil, meaning that the average price of September was less by USD 11.4 per barrel. The average price for September 2010 of the past fiscal year 2010/2011 was USD 72.5 per barrel, which ended in last March, when the average Kuwaiti oil price scored about USD 81.9 per barrel. According to the published figures in the Ministry of Finance's monthly follow up report for May 2011, Kuwait is supposed to have achieved during the first two months of this FY 2011/2012 about KD 4.451 billion worth of actual oil revenues. Kuwait is assumed to have achieved oil revenues during the first half of the current fiscal year in the amount of about KD 13.5 billion. Assuming production and prices would continue at the same rate -which is an unrealistic assumption on the price side at least- projected oil revenues for the entire current fiscal year would score about KD 27 billion, which is about KD 14.7 billion higher than the budget estimate. Adding KD 1.1 billion in nonoil revenues, total budget revenues for the current fiscal year would score about KD 28.1 billion versus KD 19.435 billion in expenditures allocations. The result will be achieving a hypothetical surplus of about KD 8.7 billion