Kuwait has increased oil production to more almost 3.1 million barrels a day (b/d), almost 900,000 b/d more than its official production quota set by oil producers’ group, Opec.

Oil Minister, Mohammad al-Baseeri warned that cuts in the production from the group would send global crude oil prices soaring.

“Our oil production yesterday [13 November] hit 3.067 million barrels and the previous day we produced 3.054 million barrels,” says Al-Baseeri, state-run Kuna news agency reports.

Opec has set Kuwait a production quota of approximately 2.2 million b/d, but the state produced 2.9 million b/d in September and October. Al-Baseeri explained the rise was to compensate for short supply in the market, adding that an additional 1-1.5 million b/d was needed to meet demand until the end of the year (MEED 1:11:11).

Kuwait’s crude oil production capacity to 3.3 million b/d and it hopes to increase production capacity to 4 million b/d by 2020, with 3.65 million b/d of this coming from state-upstream operator, Kuwait Oil Company. The remainder will come from Kuwait Gulf Oil Company’s operations in the divided zone with Saudi Arabia.