The photo is sourced from florumsoft.ae
The key factor for the growth of petroleum products export was upgrade of the refineries: in January 2021, the refining capacities in Kuwait constituted 600 thou bbl per day, and by July 2023, this metric went up to 1.4 mln bbl per day. The main driver was the commissioning of the biggest refinery in the Middle East Al Zour with 615 thou bbl per day throughput, and the Clean Fuels Project implemented by Kuwait National Petroleum Corp. (KNPC). This project included the re-engineering of Mina Abdullah and Mina Al-Ahmadi refineries for manufacturing the petroleum products with lower content of sulfur and nitrogen oxides according to Euro-4 and Euro-5 standards.
Together with the restructuring of logistics at the feedstock markets, this contributed to higher demand of the petroleum products from Kuwait in the European market. In July 2021, the share of European countries in the total export of the petroleum products from Kuwait was 11%, and by July 2023 it grew up to 29%. The Asian countries still are the major exporters (46% of the petroleum products from Kuwait as of July 2023).
Kuwait is the fifth biggest oil producer among the OPEC countries. According to EIA, in August 2023, the country produced 2.55 mln bbl per day, i.e., 9% of the total volumes produced by OPEC. Kuwait was behind Saudi Arabia (8.7 mln bbl per day), Iraq (4.3 mln bbl per day), United Arab Emirates (2.90 mln bbl per day) and Iran (2.90 mln bbl per day).
