A BIG BET ON OIL
The price of oil may be down, but
Kuwait’s oil sector investments are
up. Earlier this year, the state-owned
Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) kicked off
its US$7 billion, two-phase Lower Fars
heavy-oil development program to
help meet a national goal of boosting
the country’s daily oil production level
by 33 percent, to 4 million barrels per
day. Kuwait has drawn up more than
US$33 billion in project plans to reach
that goal by 2020.
The central benefit of these projects
is simple: economic growth. Nearly all
of Kuwait’s revenues stem from oil, so
the country is determined to keep it
flowing into the global marketplace.
“Developing heavy oil projects in
Kuwait is economical even with the
current fall in oil prices,” KOC CEO
Hashem Hashem told Bloomberg Business in December.
After years of delay due to political
disagreements, in January KOC awarded
London, England-based Petrofac and
Athens, Greece-based partner Consolidated Contractors Company a US$4.2
billion contract to complete the first
phase of the Lower Fars initiative by
2019. The phase includes projects to
drill hundreds of wells, and construct an
oil processing facility and a 162-kilo-
meter (101-mile) pipeline. If all goes as
planned, the first phase of the Lower
Fars program will add 60,000 barrels
to Kuwait’s daily oil output, which
otherwise would stagnate due to older
oil fields aging out of production.
Phase 1 projects will complement
other oil projects already in the works.
For example, the new pipeline will
connect to the US$13.7 billion Al Zour
refinery in south Kuwait, a project set
to be completed in 2017. —Imani Mixon
US$40 billion
Cost of Jakarta, Indonesia’s 40-year risk
management program
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global sea levels by 2100
50. 5 million
Number of Chinese residents vulnerable to
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Indonesia for the Netherlands-based engineering
;rm Witteveen+Bos. His organization developed
the Jakarta plan and is now helping the Indone-
sian government strengthen the seawall and relo-
cate the people who live there. “;at’s one of the
most sensitive issues in the project,” Mr. Coenen
says. “We have to relocate at least 6,000 families.”
;e long-term challenges, he says, involve
Oil pipelines in central Kuwait
