'File 39/7 (10/9) Kuwait Oil Concession' [‎40r] (79/88)

—
• At the ti&e or uy visit, there were so^e ei^ht producing
wells; but 72 iiiore In project,
• Production was currently 46,000 barrels a day; and 150,000
barrels the target for July 1948, In other words, they aiu* to
step up the annual production rate froiL 2,000,000 tons'to
7,000,000 tons in the short space of fifteen months. IF they
can only get the materials.
9* i*ain crude storage is at Achmedi - about.80.000 tons,
i.e. equivalent to about 14 days 1 current production. Oil
from this storage flows down a 22 M gravity line to the load
ing terminal. There are two loading berths (submarine pipe-
hLiafc £a buoysoas Tar rJLaad mid aiie fox the abb* Loading _
rate is nominally 1,100 tons per hour. Berthing difficulties
due to weather are frequently encountered end, all in all. it
is evident that th.eir tanker loading arrangements will call
for considerable development to cope with the vastly greater
production they have in view.
LABOUR ♦
10. There is no adequate pool of local labour to draw on and
none at all for skilled or semi-skilled work. They are,
therefore, recruiting both artisans and labourt?rs in Inaia,
and Chisholm, their Personnel Manager in London, whom I have
since met on his return from a visit to India, seemed to find
lots of room for improvement in recruitin; methods, which it
can only be hoped will be gone ahead with; for it seems to me
that proper selection at source and proper conditions of
employment at xZuwait will bear not only on the efficienty of
their operations, but on the integration of the oil community
with the people of Kuwait which they ought to strive for.
HOUSING and A^.MIII^ .
11. Circumstances will oblige the Kuwait Oil Company to
provide permanent quarters and amenities for all their people
- general labour Included. The lay-of-the-land at Achmedi is
something of a gift for the town-planner - a gentle horse-shoe
slope to sec . war( 3 that should lend itself admirably to spacing,
terracing and drainage, e n ^ I must say that, from what I heard
on the spot and have since heard from Chisholm, a good deal of
imagination has gone into their long-term planning for it.
One can only hope that time, hands and materials will permit
of this social development going hand-in-hand with industrial
development.
12. In the short-run, however, they have a major problem on
their hands of making shift to accommodate not only artisans
and labour for permanent construction but a small host of
.incoming drillers.
13* Water is another of their problems: there is brackish
well water for industrial and some domestic purposes, but
drinking water is brought in tankers. Some sort of cistilla-
tion plant is envisaged as the long-run solution. For
building materials, concrete blocks, air-spaced, are being
made on the spot from imported cement.
Sm;,.:-"™/