04/02/2025
04/02/2025

KUWAIT CITY, Feb 4: Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) is expected to announce the results of drilling and exploration operations in Jazza offshore field during the first half of 2025 soon, say sources from the oil sector, hoping that the company’s efforts will be crowned with success in discovering huge quantities of oil and gas in this field. Sources pointed out that the initial results of studies conducted by the company before starting operations in the first phase showed that ‘Jazza’, which is located in Kuwaiti waters, contains good quantities of hydrocarbon materials. “Therefore, there are aspirations for this field to join the train of success, along with the Nokhatha and Julaia fields, considering the company is optimistic about the drilling work in its first plan, which includes drilling six wells,” sources explained. Sources confirmed that the completion of the drilling work for the first phase of offshore exploration, which includes drilling six wells, will be at the beginning of 2027. They said the drilling work for the first phase had tremendous unexpected achievements, as two wells out of six wells were discovered -- a manifestation that the first phase has succeeded by 100 percent so far. Sources revealed that the start of the second phase of drilling operations in the marine areas is being prepared for the second half of 2026.
In response to a question about the delay in drilling operations for the second phase, sources stressed that focus is better than dispersion in marine exploration operations, especially the Kuwaiti marine areas, which constitute a third of the area of Kuwait. “Thus, the company is working hard to discover about 16 wells, but the early discovery of Nokhatha and Julai’a raised hopes for expanding drilling operations in the future; perhaps, more than what was announced will be explored. Sources wish that the exploration attempts for the six wells in the first phase will reach 100 percent, indicating that reaching 70 to 80 percent is also a success, taking into consideration that oil experts throughout the world confirmed that marine exploration is not an easy matter as is the case for exploration inland areas.
Sources hinted on the possibility of increasing the production capacity of Julai’a field, which is currently estimated at 800 million barrels of medium-density oil, in addition to 600 billion standard cubic feet of associated gas, to reach the same level as the offshore Al-Nokhatha field, whose reserves are estimated at 2.1 billion barrels of light oil and 5.1 trillion standard cubic feet of gas. “This could be done in the future and it is one of the plans that the company is taking into consideration. For example, the beginning of the discovery of oil in the Burgan field was modest until it became the largest oil-producing field in the world,” sources asserted. Sources said the company is intensifying its efforts to bring Nokhatha Al-Bahri and Julai’a into the production line as soon as possible to enhance its strategy to increase oil production to four million barrels. KOC recently announced the discovery of large commercial quantities of hydrocarbon resources in the offshore Nokhatha field, which is the second of its kind in the Kuwaiti marine region.
By Najeh Bilal
Al-Seyassah/Arab Times Staff