Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) plans to tender this year for oilfield enhanced technical service agreements, the chief executive of the company said.

“We are in the process of issuing this tender during this year,” Hashem Hashem told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Bahrain.

BP, Chevron, Total and Royal Dutch Shell were interested in such deals, Hashem said.

KOC, the upstream arm of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, wants to increase crude output and develop some of its oilfields including Burgan.

The plan is part of efforts to meet the Opec member state’s target of 4 million barrels of oil per day by 2020. Kuwait currently produces around 3 million bpd and exports around two-thirds of that output.

Kuwait’s oil production capacity is around 3.2 million bpd and plans to raise output are proceeding despite a fall in oil prices since mid-2014, Hashem said.

Kuwait aims to increase its oil and gas drilling rigs by 50 per cent by early next year to 120. “All those 120 rigs are onshore,” he said, adding that KOC plans offshore exploration drilling in 2016.

Meanwhile, Kuwait’s Opec governor Nawal Al-Fuzaia said Opec is likely to maintain its production policy at a meeting in June in the first public comment on what would be a crucial decision to determine the direction of global oil prices in the second half of the year.

Al-Fuzaia said: “I think so because there is less than two months, removing weekend and summer time, before the next Opec meeting. I don’t think there would be a big change in the oil market supply/demand in this time.”