Hosnia Hashim tells Oil & Gas Middle East an intensive investment programme is underway with key international partners to boost the region’s production capacity to one million barrels of oil per day.
When a country responsible for 9% of the world’s proven oil reserves decides to get something upstream done, activity is quick to materialise. The country is currently undergoing a hugely important phase of project roll outs to enhance production capabilities, boost output capacity, and make heavy oil fields a profitable and important part of its energy production mix.
With responsibility for the whole of north Kuwait’s assets, which includes, the operating and maintenance of north Kuwait’s production and water handling facilities, field development and reserves growth studies, and the increasingly important heavy oil field development and operations, Hosnia Hashim, deputy managing director of the North Kuwait assets of Kuwait Oil Company, has an array of critical national projects under her jurisdiction.
Upstream activity in north Kuwait is a massive operation, and Hashim says the situation there is entering an exciting phase, with greater production and new field development projects underway. “Currently NK is averaging crude oil production of approximately 710,000 barrels of oil per day. Our current development plans are targeting to enhance the production from the major producing reservoirs as well as developing the minor/new coming reservoirs,” she says.
As a proportion of Kuwait’s overall production landscape, North Kuwait today represents approximately 30% of overall national crude output.That proportion may be set to change however, as significant upstream spending is underway to further develop those resources. “North Kuwait is undergoing an intensive capital investment programme where we are planning to implement several major projects as well as smaller scale projects all of which are targeting to increase our production capacity to reach our production target of 1 million barrels of oil per day by 2014/15 as per our strategy,” explains Hashim.
“We have just successfully commissioned Gathering Center 24 in the North Kuwait area, which is a good example of where the investment is going. In addition, we are currently in the final stages of constructing an Early Production Facility with a capacity of 120,000 barrels per day.”
Additional Gathering Centres are also being evaluated to be added to contribute to the increase of North Kuwait’s production facilities capacity.
“We are in the process of implementing phase-1 as one of the major projects to dispose the effluent water produced with the oil and enhancement to the Sea Water Injection Facility. Phase-2 of this project has also started and currently is at its earliest stages of design,” explains Hashim. All of these projects are expected to contribute to boosting the production capacity in the North Kuwait area by a massive 30%.
Looking ahead, Hashim says she is confident the latest asset development plans are on track, and the asset will be achieving its strategic production target of 1 MMBOPD by the 2014/15 target.
