According to the country’s oil minister, Kuwait’s oil production capacity has risen to its highest level in more than 10 years.
Tariq Al-Roumi made the comment while being interviewed for Al Qabas, a local newspaper. Changes in production capacity can cause issues within OPEC, because capacity is used as the basis for setting the quota for each country. Other members like Nigeria and Iraq are also seeking to increase output, while the United Arab Emirates has had its quota increased from this year. Angola even left the group last year over its production quota.
Al-Roumi said the country’s oil production was now 3.2 million barrels per day (bpd). While this is an increase on recent years, it is not a record. The country reached a record production level in 2010 of 3.3 million bpd before declining to under 3 million bpd.
The CEO of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, which also makes hydraulic oil and manufacturing fluids under the Q8 brand, reported earlier in the year that production capacity was over 3 million bpd again. The country’s longer-term objective is to reach a capacity of 4 million bpd by 2035.
The news comes as the OPEC+ group, which includes some non-OPEC producers, continues to unwind its limits on production. At a meeting in September, it was decided to add a further 137,000 bpd to the market from October. Al-Roumi said that Kuwait was raising its production to 2.559 million bpd as part of the deal. He added, though, that decisions can be reversed or paused depending on market conditions.
