Kuwait, one of the top OPEC producers in the Middle East, plans to invest as much as $50 billion to raise its oil production capacity to above 3 million barrels per day (bpd) over the next five years, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation’s deputy chairman and CEO, Shaikh Nawaf Al-Sabah, has said.
Kuwait is “planning to invest $9 to $10 billion annually in the next five years” to increase oil production capacity, Arabian Gulf Business Insight (AGBI) quoted Al-Sabah as saying.
Kuwait’s crude oil production averaged 2.415 million bpd in April, according to secondary sources in OPEC’s latest Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) published earlier this week.
Kuwait, a founding member of OPEC, is the cartel’s fifth-largest producer, behind Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The $50 billion investment by the end of the decade is part of a longer-term plan for Kuwait to boost its oil production capacity to almost 4 million bpd by 2040, Al-Sabah said.
The 2040 strategy of Kuwait’s state-owned corporation envisages the OPEC producer to boost its sustainable crude oil production capacity to 4 million bpd, including capacity in the so-called Partitioned Neutral Zone (PNZ), established between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in 1922 to settle a territorial dispute.
The strategy also targets Kuwait to achieve sustainable non-associated gas production in Kuwait, including the Neutral Zone, of up to 2.0 BSCFD by 2040.
Last year, Kuwait announced the discovery of a significant amount of oil and gas in the Al-Noukhitha offshore field, estimated at around 3.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent. The discovery includes 2.1 billion barrels of light oil and 5.1 trillion standard cubic feet of natural gas.
Earlier this year, Kuwait approved a financing and liquidity law that will allow it to return to the debt market after eight years, with borrowing expected to fund projects to diversify its dependence on oil revenues.
While the other OPEC Gulf heavyweights, Saudi Arabia and UAE, are investing – and borrowing to invest – in major infrastructure, AI, and technology projects, Kuwait has been lagging behind.
Over the past few years, Kuwait has been more vulnerable to oil price slumps than its fellow Gulf producers as it hasn’t been able to borrow since 2017.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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