Kuwait Petroleum has hired NBK Capital to lend advise on financing worth $2 billion that is expected to come from Kuwaiti banks, according to media reports. NBK Capital is a fully-owned subsidiary of National Bank of Kuwait with operations in the Middle East.
The media reports said that they are still in the early stages of negotiation for the financing with a number of local conventional and Islamic banks. Kuwait Petroleum is planning to invest hundreds of billions of dollars to reach production capacity of 4.75 million barrels per day by 2040.
Last year, Kuwait Petroleum’s former Chief Executive Nizar al-Adsani said that the company is planning to spend approximately $114 billion in investment by 2023. After that, an additional investment of $394 billion is expected till 2040.
The company is also reevaluating its plans to spend $500 billion in capital investment. It is reviewing investment in heavy oil which is expensive to produce, media reports said. Kuwait Petroleum is hoping to produce 85,000 barrels a day of heavy oil by 2021 and is working on developing reservoirs for that reason.
Kuwait is the fourth largest producer in OPEC. It produced 2.75 million barrels per day in January this year on the basis of compiled Bloomberg data. Kuwait’s oil minister Khaled Al Fadhel told state-run media agency that they will support extending OPEC oil cuts in the second half of 2019.