Kuwait has awarded a KD14.5m ($50m) contract for chemical storage handling facilities to the local Combined Group Company.

Under the terms of the deal, Combined Group will build storage and handling facilities for a variety of chemical products at KOC’s oil production centres in the north, southeast, and west of Kuwait.

According to CGC, the contract is scheduled for completion within 720 days, about two years, from the signing ceremony.

The deal is one of a series of sub-$100m deals tendered by KOC in 2009 as it pushes to bring its production capacity up to 4 million barrels a day (b/d) by 2020 from current levels of around 3 million b/d.

KOC’s parent company Kuwait Petroleum Corporation plans to spend $78bn on new projects to boost production and processing facilities by 2014, including a new $15bn refinery at Al-Zour. However, industry executives remain cynical over the company’s ability to do this, given leaden bureaucracy and political opposition to oil schemes in the resource-rich state.