Kuwait may reach its goal to boost oil output capacity to four million barrels per day early after some new discoveries but the target date remains 2020, the head of state firm Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) said.

Existing oil production capacity in the world’s seventh-largest oil exporter is around 2.8 million bpd. The Opec member produced around 2.4 million bpd in May, according to a Reuters survey.
“The oil production strategy is still four million barrels per day by year 2020. All our plans are based on that,” KOC Chairman Farouk Al Zanki said.
“These (discoveries) open a new horizon....Maybe now we have more potential from the deep (fields) to achieve the four million bpd target earlier.”
Previous Oil Minister Sheikh Ali Jarrah Al Sabah, who resigned recently, had said in May Kuwait might reach this target in 2012 after some recent finds.
“The information wasn’t correct,” Zanki said. “It was misstated. Still our strategy is to achieve four million bpd by 2020.”
Recent discoveries in the north close to the Iraqi border were also encouraging and had prompted further exploration, Zanki said.
In the east of the country, exploration was targeted on the area around Liya, where KOC was optimistic it would find light crude, he said.
In the west, Kuwait’s most recent discovery of light crude was at Umm Rous, Zanki said.
Meanwhile, Kuwait’s Electricity and Water Minister Mohammad Al Olaim was named acting oil minister.