Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) executive Bader Al-Attar told a symposium organised by the Ministry of Oil that KOC "will start offshore discovery and digging within a couple of years' time," local news agency KUNA said.
KOC aims to add a total of 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil production capacity from a mixture of onshore and offshore sources, Al-Attar said.
KOC has a "strategic goal" to boost its output of free gas by roughly one billion cubic feet per day as planned according to discovery operations, and to make use of high technology in the improvement and development of oil exploration and production, Al-Attar said, according to KUNA.
Al-Attar did not say where the offshore locations will be, KUNA said.
However, Al-Attar did say that the country aims to boost production capacity to 3.5 million bpd by the end of this year, including from an offshore 'neutral zone' where Kuwait shares facilities with Saudi Arabia, according to Arabian Business.
By 2020 Kuwait wants to lift output capacity to four million bpd, and it hopes to sustain this level until 2030, Al-Attar said, according to KUNA.
KOC investment chief Mohammad Al-Abdeljaleel said the company has recently completed several oil and gas projects in north Kuwait, KUNA said.
The company plans three new production centres in north Kuwait, a new water centre and a water injection and treatment centre, while in west Kuwait the company has finished projects in the field of oil gathering, acid gas treatment and refining, Al-Abdeljaleel said, according to KUNA.
KOC is a subsidiary of Kuwait's national oil company the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation. Earlier this year it invited five international oil companies to bid for a contract to develop the country's Ratqa heavy oil field. This would involve constructing Kuwait's biggest heavy oil reservoir which will produce 60,000 barrels a day by 2018/19.
