Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) is responsible for Kuwait’s upstream sector outside of the Partitioned Neutral Zone (PNZ), whose upstream resources are shared with Saudi Arabia. The firm has had a long-standing target of increasing oil (crude and condensate) production capacity to 3.65mn b/d by 2020.

A febrile political environment has long hampered KOC’s work, but breathing space during the relatively calm July 2013 – November 2016 parliament enabled key projects to move ahead. Then-CEO Jamal Jaafar told MEES in April that capacity had risen to 3.225mn b/d. With key projects progressing and more planned, this gave KOC a fighting chance of achieving its target so long as everything progressed smoothly (MEES, 20 April). (CONTINUED - 1869 WORDS)