In addition to North Kuwait’s recently-reported conventional capacity gain of 37,000 b/d (MEES, 12 May), KOC has been able to increase heavy oil production capacity to 75,000 b/d according to a recent report in local daily Al-Anbaa. Constituting a 24,000 b/d capacity gain against 2020-21’s official 51,000 b/d, the addition comes largely from capacity at the Umm Niqa field ramping up to 20,000 b/d by end-2022.
Heavy oil production also comes from South Ratqa (MEES, 12 May) and the development is positive news after KOC’s end-2021 decision to scale back long-term heavy oil targets (MEES, 3 December 2021). Anbaa says that KOC hit its near-term Umm Niqa capacity target of 15,000 b/d in August 2022 before adding a further 5,000 b/d by December. Ongoing work to debottleneck trunkline linkages to production facilities and building an auxiliary processing unit will further boost capacity to 25,000 b/d. (CONTINUED - 310 WORDS)
