Arab News, Wednesday, Jun 22, 2022 | Zul Qaadah 22, 1443
Kuwait investing to meet any OPEC output increase
Kuwait:
Kuwait Petroleum Corporation chief said on Tuesday the Gulf producer had the
capacity to reach its OPEC quota and was moving to its first offshore production
as it invests to meet future oil demand.
“We are making the investments necessary to ensure
that we can meet any new increases in terms of allocations and also in terms of
demand,” Sheikh Nawaf Saud al-Sabah said on the sidelines of the Qatar Economic
Forum organised by Bloomberg in Doha.
“We always like to maintain spare capacity about
10% to 15% above where we need to be just in case of supply disruptions around
the world,” he said.
Kuwait received its first offshore rig a week ago
and it will be ready to begin drilling soon, he said without giving a precise
timescale.
“We’ve been producing onshore for almost 90 years
now and now we’re moving on to the offshore for the first time,” he said. “We
should have good news on that sometime soon.”
Kuwait is producing around 3.5 million barrels a
day (bpd) and hopes to reach 4 million bpd by 2025.
On Kuwait’s new 615,000 bpd refinery, Sheikh Nawaf
said he expected it to reach full capacity around the end of the year.
“We’ve already worked in the commissioning stages.
The hydrocarbons are in the system. It’s a hot site now,” he said.
Originally designed to produce low sulphur fuel
oil for power generation in Kuwait, much its production has been made available
to the international market after the Gulf state secured enough gas for its own
needs.
“Right now there is a tremendously good market for
fuel oil, and whether it’s bunker or diesel or whatnot. And we’ll we’ll use
that. We will supply the world with that.”
There are no plans to list units of KPC for now,
but already monetising pipelines is a possibility.
“We looked at what Aramco and ADNOC have done, in
terms of pipelines for example. It’s not something that’s completely off the
table for us, it’s something that we’re looking at,” he said.