SEVERAL FACTORS have led to speed up the construction of Kuwait's fourth oil refinery, including the construction of the Zor power generation station, due to be completed in 2007, a senior Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) official has said.

KPC's managing director for finance and planning, Suhail Bukreis, has been quoted by the Kuna news agency as saying that Kuwaiti oil officials were now seeking ways of providing enough gas to operate the new power station, which would be operational by 2007, bearing in mind that the new refinery will not be ready before 2010.
The refinery, at a construction cost of KD1 billion Kuwaiti ($3.3 billion), will have a capacity of 450,000 barrels per day (bpd).
Kuwait's Supreme Petroleum Council has approved a provision that Kuwait's private sector could participate in up to 20 per cent ownership of the new plant.
State-owned Kuwait National Petroleum Co (KNPC) CEO and managing director Sami Rushaid has said  the ecologically-friendly plant will produce cleaner fuels for the power generation plants.
Rushaid was speaking after KNPC signed a Project Management Consultant (PMC) deal with US engineering and construction firm Fluor Daniel.
Fluor will provide administrative as well as consultative services to the new refinery project and to a project to expand and upgrade Kuwait's current refineries, Kuna said.
According to KNPC's plan, the new refinery - which will also produce kerosene and diesel - is expected to start operations at the same time as the ageing 200,000-bpd Shuaiba refinery will be shut down.
Kuwait, which controls one tenth of global oil reserves, currently has three refineries with a total crude processing capacity of 930,000 bpd.
Unlike the other three, the new plant will be able to handle several types of crude oil, said Ahmad Al Jimaz, who heads the new refinery project.
The new refinery is one of several projects being developed by Opec member Kuwait in the energy sector over the next two decades at an estimated total cost of up to $40 billion, including a plan to upgrade its total oil production.
The 460,000 bpd Al-Ahmadi refinery postponed until mid-March reopening a 120,000 bpd crude distillation unit, which had been shut for maintenance.
On January 7, the refinery shut down two CDUs, each with a capacity of around 120,0000 bpd, for routine five-year turnaround maintenance. CDU-3 was to undergo five weeks of work and CDU-5's maintenance was to extend for three weeks. Al Ahmadi's CDU-4, with a 200,000 bpd capacity, is remaining open during the maintenance, along with the plant's 14,000 bpd Eocene unit.
CDU-5 reopened on February 2 after work was completed, bringing production to the current level of 336,000 bpd, the plant's acting operations manager, Khaled Al Kandary, has said.
However, instead of re-opening CDU-3 in mid-February as planned, the unit was shut until sometime mid-March, he said, citing problems found in the unit's column.
"There is corrosion in the column that needs attention," said Al Kandary, adding that all contract deliveries would be met despite the delay in re-opening the unit. Al-Ahmadi is the biggest of Kuwait's three refineries, which process a total of about 930,000 bpd.
Mina Al Ahmadi is the largest of three refineries in Kuwait. KNPC is in charge of the downstream sector in Kuwait, where the total refining capacity of the three plants is 930,000 bpd.
Meanwhile, Kuwait and India have discussed the possibility of KPC acquiring a stake in one of two proposed refineries in India, Jamal Al Noury, head of KPC's international marketing, has said in New Delhi.
"At least this time, there is a wish on both sides to cooperate," said Noury. "Past problems are unlikely to come this time," he added, referring to the collapse of earlier talks on the subject," he added.
KPC is interested in the proposed 15 million tonnes per year Paradip refinery to be built in eastern Orissa state by Indian Oil Co (IOC) and in the proposed six million metric tones per year Bina refinery.
KPC in the early 1990s signed a memorandum of understanding with IOC for a 26 per cent stake in Paradip but the talks failed over details of a purchase agreement, when the Kuwaiti company sought a guaranteed return on its investment in Paradip. Kuwait has also said it is interested in stepping up crude exports to India.
Noury said that Kuwait would supply India with 10 million metric tonnes of crude in 2005, unchanged from last year.