Kuwait’s energy sector is a story of unfulfilled potential. The small Gulf state is the seventh largest oil exporter in the world, and has about one-tenth of the world’s proven oil reserves. But grand plans for infrastructure development in the energy sector over the past decade have come to nothing.
When it comes to planning new projects, the Kuwaiti government certainly does not lack ambition. In 1997, it launched Project Kuwait, an upstream oil development scheme aimed at increasing production from 2.1 million barrels per day (bpd) to 2.6 million bpd. In 2005, the plan was updated with a new production target of 4 million bpd by 2020. The country’s downstream plans are equally impressive, including a scheme to build a fourth refinery at Al-Zour and another, known as the Clean Fuels Project, to upgrade two existing refineries.
