Foreign Oil Cos In Gulf Set Up Emergency Evacuation Plans

The Middle East

PETROLEUMWORLD Caracas, Sep. 16

DJ-Foreign oil representative offices and trading houses around the Persian Gulf countries are setting up contingency plans to leave the region in case a war breaks out following last week's terror attacks in the U.S., oil executives in Saudi Arabia and Dubai said Sunday.

They said each individual firm has its own plan and would usually decide to evacuate employees depending on its own evaluation of the situation.

Some non-oil Japanese companies in Dubai have already started to evacuate families, the source said, but wouldn't give further details.

An executive with a major Western oil company said the emergency plans are standard since the Gulf war in 1990.

"Major companies have these contingency plans since the Gulf war," he added. "We're just refreshing the data, but no one is expecting to leave for the time being."

A Japanese oil executive in Saudi Arabia said any evacuation would depend on the gravity of the situation.

"We still have bad memories of the Gulf War," he said, noting that many Japanese oil executives were taken hostage in Iraq at the outset of the Gulf war.

The executives said they noticed no change in the business environment in the Gulf Sunday, and that all oil loading operations around the Gulf oil terminals are continuing as normal.

-By Abdulla Fardan, Dow Jones Newswires MANAMA, Bahrain (Dow Jones)--

http://www.petroleumworld.com/story5189.htm

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), September 17, 2001