Submitted by Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

Kuwait is offering naphtha for loading at its ports deep into the Persian Gulf in the first such tender in months, as Middle Eastern oil producers seek to raise shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

State-held Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) has issued a tender to sell naphtha cargoes to be picked up at Kuwaiti ports by buyers, Bloomberg reported on Monday, quoting a tender document it had seen.

The Kuwaiti tender is a sign that the Gulf producers are hopeful that the Strait of Hormuz reopening would allow them to boost production and crude and product shipments.

In previous sales during the Hormuz crisis, Kuwait has asked potential buyers to charter their own tankers to pick up petroleum from the country’s ports, traders told Bloomberg.

But tanker traffic at the Strait of Hormuz has seen hiccups hours after the U.S. and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding to reopen the critical oil and LNG chokepoint. Iran claimed on Saturday it closed the Strait again, due to the Israeli strikes in Lebanon, while the United States insists the waterway is open and millions of barrels of oil are flowing out of the Gulf.

The situation remains volatile, but the Middle East Gulf producers, especially those relying solely on Hormuz such as Kuwait, appear to be preparing to increase output they had shut in in the early days of the war.

Last week, KPC’s deputy chairman and CEO Sheikh Nawaf Saud Al-Sabah said that Kuwait expects to raise its oil production to 2 million barrels per day (bpd) within a week, up from an average of 573,000 bpd in May, amid the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

“Prewar production levels could be restored within weeks once regular international commercial shipping to Kuwait ports has resumed,” Al-Sabah was quoted as saying by Kuwait News Agency.