Kuwait wants to attract foreign oil companies to help develop its emerging offshore sector, prime minister Sheikh Ahmed Abdullah al-Sabah said on Tuesday.
"I am pleased to announced that [state-owned] KPC is pursuing a plan to invite international oil companies to assist [its upstream subsidiary] KOC in the development of recently announced offshore oil and gas discoveries in Kuwait," Sheikh Ahmed said at the Kuwait Oil and Gas Show in Kuwait City.
Kuwait has produced oil for more than 80 years but only began exploring offshore recently. KOC drilled its first offshore exploration well in 2023 and has enjoyed a notable run of success since then, making three discoveries from the first three wells drilled.
The Jazah discovery, announced late last year, is estimated to hold 1 trillion ft³ of gas and more than 120mn bl of condensate. Before that, KOC announced the al-Jlaiaa discovery, holding around 800mn bl of medium sweet crude. The Nokhatha find was assessed at 2.1bn bl of light oil and 5.1 trillion ft³ of gas.
International oil companies are "invited to invest in developing the Nokhatha, Jazah and Jlaiaa discovered fields to reach optimum sustainable production levels and maximise reservoir recovery," Sheikh Ahmed said.
Kuwait is several years into an ambitious plan to lift crude production capacity to 4mn b/d by 2035 from around 3mn b/d today, and to raise non-associated gas output to 2bn ft³/d by 2040 from about 750mn ft³/d at present.
KPC chief executive Sheikh Nawaf al-Sabah, also speaking at the oil and gas event, said developing these discoveries — and Kuwait's broader offshore potential — will form "one of the multiple steps" needed to deliver the additional 1mn b/d of crude capacity.
Kuwait's offshore is "just as prolific as the onshore", Sheikh Nawaf said. But "there is no current infrastructure ready to exploit the offshore discoveries that we have made."
"If we were able to develop the offshore completely by ourselves, we may have done it," he said. "But we are fully stretched in terms of our resources right now on the onshore. That's why we are partnering."
