Another political false start in Kuwait

The opportunity offered by high oil prices to expand static oil and gas capacity is being squandered

Hopes that early elections in Kuwait in late September would draw a line under almost two years of gridlock between the executive and a particularly difficult parliament proved short-lived, with the poll delivering a thumping victory for the opposition. However, the new government collapsed within hours over Prime Minister Sheikh Ahmed Nawaf al-Ahmad al-Sabah’s unfathomable decision to reappoint mostly the same ministers who had clashed so bitterly with MPs during the previous session. The prospect of another period of tension between the two government branches bodes ill for the country’s bedrock hydrocarbons sector, afflicted as it is by stagnating oil production and rapidly rising gas imp