Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company (Kufpec), a unit of state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, is planning to increase production to nearly 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) by 2020 and is seeking a new loan to help finance its expansion programme, its chief executive said on Tuesday.
Kufpec, which currently produces 75,000 boepd, plans to sign in the next few weeks a syndicated loan similar to a five-year US$1 billion loan it secured last year, Nawaf Al Sabah told reporters on the sidelines of Adipec conference in Abu Dhabi.
“Now as we continue our growth strategy for our company, we are out seeking additional funding for that,” said Mr Al Sabah.
“It [the loan] is going to be consistent with last year’s.”
The firm, which is present in 15 countries, plans to sign a $1.5bn agreement with Chevron of the US to acquire a 30 per cent stake in its Duvernay shale resources in Alberta, Canada.
Kuwait plans more than $40bn of investment to significantly increase its capacity to produce oil and gas, Al Jarida newspaper reported.
In January, Kufpec paid $1.135bn for an 8 per cent stake in Australia’s Wheatstone-Iago fields joint venture and 6.4 per cent stake in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant, buying the stakes from Royal Dutch Shell. Before the deal, Kufpec had an existing 7 per cent stake in the Wheatstone LNG project and 35 per cent of the associated Julimar-Brunello joint venture. LNG is gas cooled to a liquid to be transported by ships.
Kufpec was seeking investments in both oil and gas projects, but would like to balance its gas-weighted portfolio with more oil projects, he said.
“We are looking at countries that have consistent growth stories themselves and also can make rational sense with our current portfolio,” he said.
Kufpec is also looking to transfer technology from its investments abroad to Kuwait, which needs such technology to develop its energy sector, he added.
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