KPC to spend half of investments budget abroad

Kuwait, April 25, 2009

The state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) plans to spend around half of its investment budget on petrochemical and refinery projects abroad, the official Kuna news agency reported on Saturday.

The company will also focus on projects to raise domestic production, Kuna quoted the firm as saying in a statement.

It did not set a timeframe nor did it give figures on the size of KPC's investment budget.

KPC said last month Kuwait had boosted production capacity to 3 million barrels per day (bpd) and was on track to reach its goal of 4 million bpd by 2020.

Kuwaiti officials have said the Gulf Arab state was revising its investment strategy in the oil sector after saying several times it would spend $55 billion in five years.

Earlier on Saturday, Kuna quoted Oil minister Sheikh Ahmad Al-Abdullah Al-Sabah as saying that Kuwait was still committed to a 200,000 barrel per day refinery project in Vietnam, a $6 billion joint venture with Japanese refiner Idemitsu Kosan Company and Vietnamese oil monopoly Petrovietnam.

Building work on the refinery, which should start in 2013, had already begun, Sheikh Ahmad told Kuna ahead of a meeting of Middle East oil producing countries and Asian consuming nations in Tokyo on Sunday.

Kuwait is also planning to build a refinery in China under a joint venture with Sinopec and has yet to decide if it would build a refinery and petrochemical plant in India with partners, KPC said in March.-Reuters

Tags: investment | Refinery | Kuwait Petroleum Corporation |