Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) will invest $35 billion in expansions and new projects in the coming five years, said the company's chief executive officer Mohammad Ghazi Al-Mutairi.

"At the forefront of these projects came the multi-billion dollar clean fuel project, the new Al-Zour refinery, the fifth natural gas plant and the construction of new liquefied natural gas import facilities," Al-Mutairi was quoted as saying by Wam news agency.

He was speaking at the second day of the third Kuwait Oil and Gas Summit and Exhibition.

Al-Mutairi underlined that the strategic projects will have great impact on Kuwait's oil products competitiveness on the global market.

"These projects would help Kuwaiti products enter new international markets thanks to its high quality and competitiveness and give a push to national economy and development in the country," he said, accoring to Kuna news agency.

The KNPC signed this week contracts for the $12 billion clean fuel project with three international consortia. The project aims at upgrading and expanding the existing KNPC two refineries at Mina Abdulla and Mina Al-Ahmadi.

The project will transform the refineries into an integrated merchant refining complex that meets the requirements of the world oil market. It will also increase the refining capacity to 800,000 barrels a day.

The new multi-billion dollar Al-Zour refinery will be one of the largest oil refining plant worldwide. It will help supply low sulfur fuel (less than 1 percent) to the local power plants.