Kuwait's refining capacity will rise to 1.2 million barrels per day after completion of a new refinery and upgrade of other plants in projects set to cost billions of dollars, state refiner KNPC said on Saturday. Sami Rushaid, chairman of Kuwait National Petroleum Co, told a news conference that upgrade works and the new refinery - which might cost up to $5 billion - is set to be completed by 2010. Kuwait's current refining capacity is about 930,000 bpd.
"We expect the total refining capacity after the fourth (new) refinery and the upgrade works will reach about 1.2 million bpd by about 2010," Rushaid said.
"At this stage we expect the cost to be around $4 billion to $5 billion," he said. Officials have previously put the cost of the new refinery at just over $3 billion.
He said upgrade works will carried out on several units at Kuwait's two largest refineries - Mina al-Ahmadi and Mina Abdullah. Initial cost estimates are about one billion Kuwaiti dinars ($3.4 billion).

Copyright Reuters, 2005

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