A Kuwaiti lawmaker on Monday demanded that the oil minister provides the exact size of the OPEC member's crude reserves following doubts over the official figure of 100 billion barrels.
In a question to Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmad Abdullah al-Sabah, liberal MP Saleh al-Mulla demanded the volume of recoverable reserves in each Kuwaiti oilfield, including offshore fields and those shared with Saudi Arabia.
MPs in earlier parliaments posed similar questions after industry newsletter Petroleum Intelligence Weekly said in January 2006 that Kuwait's oil reserves stood at 48 billion barrels, based on internal records seen by the newsletter.
Two years ago, the then Oil Minister Mohammad al-Olaim insisted that Kuwaiti oil reserves were 100 billion barrels but MPs still doubted the figure. He gave no details about the size of proven reserves.
The PIW report also claimed that Kuwait's fully proven reserves amounted to only 24.2 billion barrels.
At the time, Kuwaiti oil officials said the report was inaccurate and that it failed to take into account undeveloped reservoirs.
Kuwait's 100 billion barrels form the world's fifth largest deposits after those of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates.
Kuwait, whose officially stated oil reserves constitute about 10 percent of global crude reserves, is pumping around 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd) and oil income contributes more than 95 percent of public revenues.