Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) has pre-qualified 17 firms to bid for a contract involving the supply and installation of 24 drilling towers within a project expansion plan in the next five years, a local newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The companies – both domestic and regional – are required to supply the drillers gradually within a period stretching from nine months to 12 years after signing the deal, according to the Arabic language daily Alanba.
The report said contractors would be required to operate the drillers 24 hours a day and added that the machines are of four types, ranging between 550 and 1,000 horsepower.
KOC is a subsidiary of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), a government-owned holding company.
Kuwait holds approximately seven percent of global oil reserves and has a current production capacity of about 3.15 million barrels per day.
KPC has announced its intention to increase oil production capacity to four million barrels per day (mmb/d) by 2020.
