KNPC honors officials who helped sign Al-Zour Refinery contracts
KUWAIT: The Kuwait National Petroleum Corporation (KNPC) held a ceremony yesterday to honor current and former officials who contributed in signing Al-Zour Refinery project’s contracts. CEO Mohammad AlMutairi said in a speech at the event quoted by Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that the project “boosts KNPC’s competitive capabilities in light of the great fluctuations in the global oil markets.”
Al-Zour Refinery, which is slated to complete around 2017, will have a refinement capacity of 615,000 barrels per day, brining KNPC’s total production capacity to 1.4 million barrels of high quality products per day.
The refinery has a strategic goal of supplying low sulfur fuel (less than one percent compared to current four percent sulfur fuel) to the local power plants. This will significantly reduce pollutant emissions and in that sense it constitutes a special importance to the environment.
The contract to build the $16-billion refinery were signed on October 13, 2015 were with 10 foreign companies including Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas, China’s Sinopec, South Korea’s Hyundai, SK, Daewoo and Hanwha, Britain-based Fluor, Italy’s Saipem and India’s Essar. Last year, the KNPC signed contracts for a $12 billion project to upgrade two of its three existing refineries. Kuwait sits on 101.5 billion barrels of crude reserves - equivalent to 6.8 percent of the world’s proven reserves according to the latest OPEC figures. It pumps 2.8 million bpd.