Kuwait Oil Company, a subsidiary of the government owned Kuwait Petroleum Company, has set a target of 4 million barrels per day (mbpd) by 2020.
The country’s current capacity is approximately 3 bpd with an additional 200,000 bpd produced from the divided zone with Saudi Arabia currently. The target is expected to be reached mostly by development plans in North Kuwait with some developments in the divided zone as well.
“To achieve the 4 million target, we aim to produce 3.65 mbpd from Kuwait and 350,000bpd from the divided zone,” said Sami al-Rushaid, chairman and managing director of KOC.
“Some of the increase will come from the development of heavy oil, we are planning to produce 60,000 bpd of heavy oil by 2017 and 2018, but some will also come from the Jurassic light oil which is coming out with gas, we expect to produce around 400,000 bpd of light oil from the Jurassic by 2020,” he added.
Going beyond its 2020 deadline, al-Rushaid stated that the company plans to have production capacity plateau at 4 mbpd from 2020 to 2030. “Generally speaking, what we will be seeing from 2020 to 2030 will be more of what we call the unconventional, heavy oil and Jurassic light oil.”
Developing the new fields in Kuwait will not be an easy task. “It is a very complex reservoir, it is deep, has high pressure, high temperature, fractured and has H2S, it has everything and dealing with that is one of the main challenges. However we are making very good progress on this so far,” he said.
