Kuwait is reportedly planning to invest $112bn in the next five years to boost oil and gas production, according to a senior executive of the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC).

In the oil sector, the country will increase production capacity from the current levels of 3.2 million barrels a-day (b/d) to 4 million b/d by 2020, Wafaa Yousuf al-Zaabi, managing director of Planning and Finance at KPC, has been quoted as saying by UAE English language daily Gulf News.

Kuwait has also set itself a target to increase natural gas production from 200 million cubic feet per day (cf/d) to 500 million cf/d by mid-2018, to 1 billion cf/d by 2020, and to 2.5 billion cf/d by 2040, Al-Zaabi said at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi recently.

In the downstream sector, Kuwait will finalise upgrading its existing facility by the end of this year and will commission a new refinery with a capacity of 612,000 b/d which will be integrated with Kuwait’s existing petrochemical complex.

MEED reported earlier this month that the front-end engineering design (Feed) for Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries Company’s (KIPIC) planned petrochemical facility at Al-Zour won’t be completed this year.

KPC is also considering making the final investment decision for a refinery project in Oman, which is a joint venture with the Oman Oil Company.

It is also seeking downstream opportunities in Asia and is working on two refining projects in the US and Canada, Al Zaabi has said.