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OPEC oil producer Kuwait approved nearly 8.22 billion Kuwaiti dinars ($27.1 billion) for upstream oil projects during fiscal year 2021-2022, which ended on 31 March, a Kuwaiti newspaper said on Tuesday.
Most of them are large projects that were launched in 2021 and cover expansion of crude oil capacity, exploration, oil well drilling and gas operations, the Arabic language daily Alanba said, quoting a report by the state-owned Kuwait Oil Company (KOC).
The allocations were nearly 2.8 percent higher than in the previous 2020-2021 fiscal year, when they stood at nearly 7.9 billion dinars ($26 billion), the report showed.
“Most of them are large projects covering capacity expansions as part of the Company’s strategy to increase production and oil reserves,” said KOC, which manages Kuwait’s upstream oil industry.
New projects in the current fiscal year (2022-2023) include further production increases and maintenance of capacity, cutting gas flaring, more drilling and exploration operations, starting a major marine exploration programme and other projects, the report said without specifying capital spending.
Kuwait, which controls the world’s sixth largest recoverable oil deposits of around 101 billion barrels, aims to boost crude output capacity to at least 4 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2040 from nearly 3 million bpd currently.
(Writing by Nadim Kawach; Editing by Anoop Menon)
