Kuwait last year abandoned its long standing target of boosting oil production capacity to 4mn b/d (MEES, 14 December 2018) amid a realization that long-standing political problems had made it an impossible challenge. But evidently the search for excuses has continued, with Bloomberg this week citing a source at Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) that the target was dropped because rising environmentalism is set to restrict global demand growth. A more recent 2040 target of 4.75mn b/d is also under threat. Clearly the dropped-target is not due to environmentalism, but raising this specter is unlikely to go down well with Kuwait’s fellow Opec members. The Opec mantra is very much that oil demand growth will remain strong, driven along by burgeoning petrochemicals markets.