Kuwait Oil Company signs $334m US deal

State oil explorer Kuwait Oil Co (KOC) has signed a new consultancy deal worth $334 million with U.S. firm Fluor Corp, state news agency KUNA said on Saturday.

Fluor would provide consultancy services to manage unidentified projects and parts of its activities in the next five years, extending a previous agreement, KUNA quoted a KOC statement as saying.

The deal would help KOC, which is in charge of oil exploration in the world's seventh-largest oil exporter, to improve its production, said KOC Chief Executive Sami al-Rushaid.

Industry sources told Reuters in September that state refiner Kuwait National Petroleum Co (KNPC) was in talks with  Fluor for a tender package for Kuwait's planned 615,000 bpd refinery, with one of them saying it was worth $2 billion.

KOC said on October 22 it had reached a preliminary deal with Exxon Mobil Corp to produce heavy oil in the north of the Gulf Arab state and aimed to boost production to 900,000 barrels per day by 2020. (Reuters)