Saudi Arabia reiterated on Monday that plans with Kuwait regarding the Durra gas field were going ahead.
Meanwhile, an Iranian foreign minister spokesperson stated that Iran informed Kuwait that it was ready to resolve the Durra field issue through “technical and legal dialogue.”
On the Durra shared offshore field with Kuwait, Saudi Aramco's CEO Amin Nasser said plans were going ahead.
"Durra field is going as planned with the Kuwaitis, (with) no issue at this stage in terms of... the engineering and development," he said.
“We have expressed our readiness to engage in dialogue with the Kuwaiti side," a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Nasser Kanaani told Iranian media.
Kuwait’s Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Oil, and Acting Minister of Finance Saad Al-Barrak said, in response to a parliamentary question on Thursday, that the Iranian claims regarding the Durra field “do not negate the validity of the facts on the ground, which confirm the joint ownership of the field by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.”
Barrak said in previous statements that Kuwait and Saudi Arabia would commence drilling and production from the field without waiting for a demarcation deal with Iran.
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait reaffirmed that the ownership of the natural resources in the divided submerged area in the Arabian Gulf, including the entire Durra field, was joint ownership between the two countries.
The two Gulf states renewed “their previous and repeated calls” to Iran to negotiate the eastern border of the submerged area divided between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as one negotiating party, and the Iranians as another party, in line with international law and the principles of good neighborliness, the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The Ministry announced that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait “exclusively have full sovereign rights to exploit the wealth in that area.”
Kuwait also announced its readiness to take “any procedures or measures”, including negotiations to conclude international treaties and agreements, to guarantee the joint rights of the submerged Durra field, which contains huge amounts of gas.
