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Kuwait: Oil reserves rises to 97.3 billion barrels |
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Wednesday, 18 May 2005 |
Kuwait oil reserves have increased to 97.3 billion barrels as the country managed to add 818 million bbl to its previous deposits of 96.5 billion bbl, a senior oil official has confirmed. The Kuwait oil reserves are considered the fourth largest among members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries after Saudi Arabia, Iran and United Arab Emirates. Kuwait has an official OPEC production quota of 2.207 million barrels a day.
Ali al-Shammari, assistant managing director of Kuwait Oil Company, said the additional reserves meant to offset record production that averaged 2.4 million b/d in the past fiscal year 2004-05, which ended in March.
Al-Shammari said KOC drilled 73 new wells and upgraded 122 during the past year to boost their output capacity. He also said the cost of oil production in Kuwait continued to be at $1/bbl, one of the lowest in the world, compared with nearest figure of $2/bbl in some other countries. KOC also produced 1.1 billion cubic meters of associated gas during the past year.
KOC is expected to sign a second contract worth $1.4 billion with a South Korean company before the year-end to upgrade and modernize some of the oil installations.
KOC has already signed a $700-million contract with a foreign company for the first phase of the upgrading program. Also another $1-billion contract to build new oil export terminals will be finalized by the end of this year, while a tender winner of a contract to build an oil storage facility with eight tanks is expected to be declared shortly, al-Shammari said.
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