KUWAIT CITY: OPEC member Kuwait plans to spend as much as $90 billion on oil projects inside and outside the country over the next five years, a top oil executive said Monday. “About $90 billion will be spent over the next five years to achieve our strategy,” said Hashim Al-Refaai, managing director for planning with Kuwait Petroleum Corp. (KPC), the emirate's national oil conglomerate. More than a third of the amount is earmarked for two major projects to build a new refinery at a cost of $14 billion and upgrading two existing refineries for $16.3 billion, he told the 6th annual conference on Kuwait projects. The two projects have been stalled by political disputes between MPs and the government over the past five years. The 615,000-barrels per day (bpd) refinery project was scrapped by the government after awarding it to South Korean and Japanese firms due to protests by opposition lawmakers that its tendering did not go through the proper legal channels. Faruq al-Zanqi, the CEO of the national oil company KPC, told reporters on Monday that he is hopeful the two projects will be tendered and awarded in 2011. He said KPC is waiting for the Supreme Petroleum Council, the highest oil decision-making body, to meet and take a favorable decision on the two projects, insisting Kuwait needed them. After completing the two projects, Kuwait plans to shut down Shuaiba refinery, one of three refineries in the country with a total capacity output of 930,000 bpd. And when the two projects are operational, Kuwait will have a refining capacity at 1.4 million bpd. Kuwait's expenditure plan in the oil sector which supplies 90 percent of public income, envisages raising oil output capacity to 3.5 million barrels of oil per day by 2015 from 3.1 million bpd currently, Refaai said. – Agence France
