Kuwait plans to spend $3-$4 mln on oil sector

OPEC member Kuwait plans to spend between $3 billion and $4 billion this year on its oil and gas sector, and remains committed to boosting crude production capacity to 4 million barrels a day by 2020, a senior official said Monday.

"KOC's budget on the capital side ... will be between $3 billion and $4 billion," Mohammed Husain, deputy chairman of Kuwait Oil Co. told Zawya Dow Jones in an interview on the sidelines of an Abu Dhabi conference.

"We are targeting 4 million barrels a day of capacity by 2020, and maintaining that to 2030. For gas, were targeting 4 billion (cubic feet a day) by 2030," Husain said.

Kuwait's current crude production capacity stands at 3.15 million barrels a day and the country is pumping in line with its Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries quota, he added. The Persian Gulf state, with a daily production of around 2.2 million barrels, is OPEC's fourth-largest producer.

"Our production is within the quota. We're not far away from the quota," Husain said.

Kuwait continues to talk to international oil companies, or IOCs, about getting involved in the country's upstream oil sector, Husain said.

"We never close the doors. We keep talking to the IOCs," he said.

Kuwait's current crude output capacity stood at 3.15 million barrels per day (bpd), a senior official from the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) told Reuters on Monday.

Around 2.85 million bpd of that capacity belonged to state-owned KOC, while the other 300,000 bpd was Kuwait's capacity in the Neutral Zone, said Mohammed Husain, deputy chairman of the firm.

Current average output capacity from the Neutral Zone is around 538,000 bpd. The zone is a region between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia that dates back to 1920s treaties to establish regional borders.

Current production by the world's fourth-largest oil exporter is constrained by the OPEC quota, Husain said.

According to a Reuters survey Kuwait's crude output in January was pegged at 2.28 million bpd.

OPEC has kept its official output limits unchanged since late December in 2008, when it agreed to cut supply by 4.2 million bpd in response to lower demand and prices.