04 August 2019
A delay of more than a year in Kuwait's multi-billion-dollar clean fuel project (CFP) has cost its state oil operator nearly 250 million Kuwaiti dinars ($825 million), a local newspaper said on Sunday.

CFP was scheduled to be completed in April 2018 but will now be commissioned this month as a result of a delay in equipment delivery, the Arabic language daily Alanba said, citing official oil sources.

"The delay means a loss of 250 million dinars in revenues which were expected to be made had the project been finished on time last year," the paper said.

It said the Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) has already repaid around 121 million dinars ($400 million) of a loan it had obtained from local and foreign creditors to partly fund CFP, which cost nearly 4 billion dinars ($13.2 billion).

The paper said KNPC borrowed nearly $3.9 billion in April 2016 and got another loan of $6.2 billion in August 2017, with maturity in 2026 and 2028.

CFP, which was awarded four years ago, involves the development of Kuwait's two main oil refineries of Al-Ahmadi and Mina Abdullah, with a combined production capacity of around 735,000 barrels per day (bpd).

The plan and another project to build the 615,000-bpd Al-Zour refinery in South Kuwait will double the country's total refining output to more than 1.4 million bpd.

(Writing by Nadim Kawach; Editing by Anoop Menon)

(anoop.menon@refinitiv.com)

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