If the low oil prices were meant to bring Middle Eastern hydrocarbons projects to a grinding halt, Kuwait appears not to have received the memo. Despite years of indecision affecting the country’s upstream expansion plans, state-owned Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), the upstream arm of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, appears keen to maintain a healthy momentum behind its project activities, with senior executives unveiling fresh plans to tender for enhanced technical service agreements on some of its oil fields.
A tender is expected this year, KOC chief executive Hashem Hashem said at a conference in Bahrain on March 9, 2015, with oil majors such as BP, Chevron, Total and Royal Dutch Shell expected to be interested. This would help furnish KOC’s plans to hike oil production at some of its largest fields, as part of a long-term target – formalised under the name Project Kuwait – to incentivise foreign investment in order to help the country raise its oil production capacity from about 3.2 million barrels per day (bpd) to 4 million bpd by 2020.