Kuwait's government has accepted the resignation of the country's oil minister, Hani Hussein, the official KUNA news agency reported Monday.
Sheikh Mohammed Abdulla, minister of state for cabinet affairs and for municipal affairs, issued a decree accepting the resignation, the agency said.
Sheikh Mohammed said a second decree had been issued appointing Kuwait's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Mustafa al-Shamali, as acting oil minister.
Hussein's resignation follows requests by lawmakers to question him in parliament in a session that had been set for Tuesday.
The questioning was to cover alleged irregularities over a $2.2 billion damages payment to the US' Dow Chemical that had been ordered by the International Chamber of Commerce as a penalty for pulling out of a $17.4 billion joint venture in Kuwait in December 2008. The chamber was acting as arbitrator in the contract dispute between Dow and a unit of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation.
Lawmakers' most recent request to question the minister was filed two weeks ago, after Kuwait paid the penalty to Dow, disregarding calls from lawmakers to refuse to hand over the money.
Earlier this year, following the election of a new parliament in December, Hussein had been regularly targeted by a number of Kuwaiti members of parliament over a variety of alleged violations. A previous request to question him had been filed in February, but parliament agreed to delay proceedings until its next parliamentary session, beginning in October.
Hussein, a former KPC managing director, had last week replaced a number of top executives of the national oil company. KPC then replaced the chiefs of all eight of its operating subsidiaries, completing an unprecedented management shake-up.
KPC said the restructuring was unrelated to political turmoil over the Dow affair and that it wanted to introduce "new blood" into Kuwait's oil sector to cope with current and future challenges.
Nonetheless, the penalty payment to Dow has plunged Kuwait into renewed political crisis after two MPs filed a request to question the interior minister. Such requests are frequent in Kuwait, where MPs are elected but the cabinet is appointed by the emirate's ruler.
The government boycotted parliamentary sessions on May 14 and 15 and all ministers offered to resign.
Kuwait daily newspaper Al-Qabas reported Monday that Hussein was given the choice of facing questioning Tuesday or resigning, and chose the latter.
He was quoted as telling Al-Qabas that he hoped the new oil minister would provide political cover for the "massive change" introduced into Kuwait's oil sector last week.
"I am comfortable by all standards, I have performed my duties ... I hope the oil sector will be relieved of political pressures," he told the newspaper.
Hussein's resignation comes only a few days before the next OPEC ministerial meeting, scheduled for May 31 in Vienna.
Kuwait is one of OPEC's biggest oil exporters. It produced 2.8 million b/d of crude in April, the latest Platts survey of OPEC oil production shows.
