KOC launches $1.2bn tender to produce heavy crude oil

Kuwait Oil Co. (KOC) plans to launch a tender later this year for the construction of facilities to produce heavy crude oil at a cost of up to KD 1.2 billion (USD 4.2 billion), the company's CEO Hashem Hashem said. The entire tender will be awarded to one single international contractor whose task will be to construct facilities to process heavy crude oil, to build pipelines, and to facilitate the exporting of that oil from the Fourth Refinery, said Hashem, on the sidelines of an oil conference being held here. He told reporters that the wisdom behind using one contractor was that the latter will be entirely responsible for the whole project from beginning to end, and no one else. He said that raising Kuwait's oil productivity level involved extensive constructions of facilities to store oil, gas, water and of power plants and exportation facilities in addition to drilling new wells. He further said that Kuwait's current production was about 3 million barrels a day. OPEC secretary general Abdullah al-Badri, attending the same conference here on oil and gas, the first of its kind hosted by Kuwait, said that current world oil prices were fair for both producers and consumers. He expected that the rancor between the US president and the congress will soon pass and that, at any rate, oil prices will not plummet below USD 80. On the possibility that shale oil and gas may sooner or later affect the price of oil, he said "this new source of energy would not impinge on the price of crude oil," expecting that shale oil production might peak in 2018, with the daily production of four or five million barrels a day, but thereafter it was liable to decrease. OPEC countries meanwhile would not be affected by this, he assured. He did not reveal any intention of production spikes by OPEC in the short run and sounded sanguine about the relaxing of tensions between Iran and the US, noting that this would reflect positively on the oil markets, since Iran is a major oil producer and possess sizable oil reserves. He also sounded optimistic about the Libyan oil production, saying the crisis regarding it was on its way to resolution, noting that Libya has large oil reserves and skillful cadres of oil workers