The Al Zour refinery project is expected to be completed by December 2019, according to a statement from Khaled Mahdi, Kuwaiti secretary general of the supreme council for planning and development, Oil and Gas News has reported.

Completing the Al Zour refinery in 2019 will help Kuwait to achieve its ambitious production goals. The government hopes to increase the country’s daily production capacity from 3.2 million barrels to 4 million barrels by the end of 2020.

Kuwait’s downstream development plan also includes a more than double increase of the refinery capacity of he state-owned Kuwait National Petroleum Co (KNPC) from 936,000 b/d to 2 mb/d by 2035 as part of a $25 billion spending plan.

This expansion will include the Mina Al-Ahmadi, Mina Abdullah and Shuaiba refineries and will take place over two phases. The plan will enable the country to process the increasing quantities of heavy oil produced by the exploration and production sector.

The objective of the plan is to increase the country’s refining capacity to 42% of its crude oil production by 2040, up from the current 27%.

Al Zour is currently 57% complete and will process heavy crude from the north of Kuwait, providing low-sulphur fuel for domestic power generation.