ENERGY MINISTRY Kuwaiti official sees oil supply lasting 60 years

The undersecretary-minister's son is studying engineering at YSU.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- The Kuwaiti undersecretary-minister of oil believes the world's supply of oil will last at least another 60 years.
And that's oil that's already been discovered and is easy to get out of the ground.
"In the U.S., there's a lot of places where it's undiscovered, but because of the environment, it's not being touched," said Issa M. Al-Own, who spoke to a room of about 20 people Tuesday at Youngstown State University.
"Saudi Arabia is a bottomless tank of oil," he added.
The discovered oil amounts to about 1,000 billion barrels in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, said Al-Own, whose son is an engineering student at YSU.
OPEC is comprised of 11 countries whose economies rely heavily on oil exportation. They include Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Iran and Venezuela.
OPEC countries comprise 70 percent of the world's oil reserves, he said.
The world demand for oil is increasing, particularly in parts of Asia, Al-Own said.
Al-Own became Kuwait's undersecretary for the Ministry of Energy, or the oil sector, in 2001. He previously worked as chairman and managing director of Gulf Industrial Investment Co. and as executive assistant to the managing director for international operations for Kuwait Petroleum Corp.
Expectations for future
He said that Kuwait is expanding its oil production and investing in more refineries, including those abroad.
But Al-Own also cautioned that oil isn't a lasting commodity.
He told listeners to close their eyes and imagine their lives without oil and all of the necessities and luxuries that it provides.
"We've engineered our lives where we can't live comfortably without oil," Al-Own said.
Technology must be developed to deal with heavy oil -- oil that is difficult to retrieve from the ground or must be processed further before it can be used, he said.
Renewable forms of energy also must be developed to sustain the growing world demand for the future, he added.