KNPC announces record profits of $3.32bn in 2022-23
KUWAIT: Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) announced on Tuesday record-breaking profits of KD 1.016 billion ($3.32 billion) for the fiscal year 2022-2023.
Kuwait, which holds about 8 per cent of the world’s oil reserves, produced 2.7 million barrels per day in 2022, up from 2.42 million bpd a year earlier.-- AFP.
CEO Wadha Al-Khateeb expressed to KUNA her pride in this exemplary achievement, indicating that the company had logged in a KD 675 million increase ($2.2 billion) against the previous year’s KD 341.380 million ($1.11 billion), marking a 198 percent jump. Khateeb attributed this significant jump in profits to various factors including the global increase in prices of oil products, and the company’s improved operational performance especially following the complete and successful operation of eco fuel project in Mina Ahmadi and Mina Abdallah refineries.
The project, Khateeb clarified, took quality of products to better levels, up to par with latest global standards, allowing the company to market products in new global markets and creating profitable opportunities. These new large and innovative projects were accompanied with a rise in refining capacity aiming to meet demands of local markets and keep up with augmenting global demands, explained the CEO. Khateeb presented several marketing indices that contributed to the achievement of such profit, including putting out improved diesel and low sulfur gasoline.
KNPC CEO Wadha Al-Khateeb.
Moreover, she took the opportunity to applaud the company’s cadres in all its various sectors, saying that what has been achieved is nothing but the fruit of their labor. Kuwait, which holds about 8 per cent of the world’s oil reserves, produced 2.7 million barrels per day in 2022, up from 2.42 million bpd a year earlier, according to OPEC data. The country, OPEC’s fourth-largest producer, aims to raise its oil production capacity to 3.15 million bpd in the next four years. It also plans to increase its natural gas output by about 79 per cent to 930 million cubic feet per day in the same period.
The country has set a refining capacity target of 1.45 million bpd, up from 755,000 bpd currently. In November, Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries said the first phase of Al-Zour refinery had begun commercial operations. The move will be followed by the second and third phases of the refinery’s operations, moving towards full maximum refining capacity, KIPIC Chief Executive Waleed Al-Bader said at the time. The refinery is designed to process heavy crudes and will have a capacity of 615,000 bpd.
Kuwait will invest more than $300 billion in the energy sector by 2040, the country’s Oil Minister Saad Al-Barrak said at the OPEC seminar earlier this month. Al-Barrak also said that the country hoped to have a higher production quota within OPEC after expanding its output capacity. Similar to other Gulf countries, Kuwait has benefitted from a surge in crude prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. Brent, the benchmark for two thirds of the world’s oil, surged to about $140 a barrel last year after Moscow started its military offensive against Ukraine. It is currently trading at about $83 a barrel. – KUNA and agencies.
