Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) will announce tenders this year for oilfield enhanced technical service agreements, Reuters reports.Â
Speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Bahrain, the chief executive of the company Hashem Hashem said the process of issuing the tender has started, with BP, Chevron, Total and Royal Dutch Shell already showing interest in the deal.Â
KOC, the upstream arm of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, has announced plans to increase production and develop some of its oilfields including Burgan, the second largest field in the world.Â
This is part of its efforts to meet the OPEC member state’s target of 4mn barrels of oil per day (bpd) by 2020.
Kuwait currently produces around 3mn bpd and has a production capacity of around 3.2mn bpd.Â
“We have a plan which we are progressing with. The oil price (drop) as we see it is a temporary thing,” he said.
The Gulf Arab state also aims to increase its drilling rig count by 50% by early next year to 120.
“All those 120 rigs are onshore,” he said, adding that KOC plans offshore exploration drilling in 2016.