KOC agrees $16bn pipeline deal with Blackstone, Brookfield, KKR

Kuwait Petroleum Corporation's (KPC) afloat owned subsidiary Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) has entered into a lease-and-lease-back statement worthy $16bn (Kd4.96bn) with a consortium of planetary investors led by Blackstone, Brookfield and KKR.

The statement involves KOC's full home and export pipeline network.

The transaction constitutes the largest overseas nonstop concern successful Kuwait to date. Dubbed Project Peregrine, it is described arsenic the country's largest infrastructure partnership.

The statement establishes a caller Kuwaiti-incorporated associated task (JV) that volition lease usage rights for each 13 of KOC's pipelines, which span astir 320km.

These rights volition past beryllium leased backmost to KOC for a play of 20.5 years, with the institution maintaining exclusive use, on with operational and attraction control, connected a volume-based tariff basis.

Following a competitory enactment process, the consortium volition get a corporate 49% involvement successful the JV, divided arsenic among Blackstone, Brookfield and KKR.

Blackstone chairman, CEO and co-founder Stephen Schwarzman said: "Kuwait's leadership, imaginativeness and resources person made it a compelling destination for planetary capital, built connected its spot successful the vigor assemblage and singular efforts to diversify its economy.

"We are arrogant to enactment this captious infrastructure, helping conscionable rising planetary vigor request portion deepening Blackstone's astir four-decade concern with Kuwait."

KOC volition clasp the remaining 51% of the venture, retaining afloat ownership and operational power implicit the pipeline network.

The operation volition not spot immoderate limits connected Kuwait's refining throughput oregon accumulation volumes, which volition proceed to beryllium determined by the State of Kuwait.

The JV is expected to make $7.85bn successful upfront proceeds for KOC erstwhile the transaction closes.

This magnitude is expected to enactment KPC's superior expenditure plans, including the extremity of reaching 4 cardinal barrels of crude lipid accumulation capableness per time by 2035.

KPC lawman president and CEO Shaikh Nawaf Saud Al-Sabah said: "Project Peregrine represents the largest overseas nonstop concern successful Kuwait's past and a defining milestone for our country's economical development.

"It delivers connected the committedness announced by His Highness the Prime Minister Shaikh Ahmad Abdullah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah astatine the Kuwait Oil & Gas Show (KOGS) successful February 2026 to pull world-class planetary investors into Kuwait's strategical infrastructure portion preserving afloat nationalist ownership and operational control."