Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company (KUFPEC) has signed a $1.1 billion finance deal with a number of banks with the aim of expanding its oil and gas operations, the company’s chief executive said on Tuesday. Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), First Abu Dhabi Bank, Societe Generale, Japan’s Mizuho and Scotiabank are the banks involved in the transaction, according to a company statement. The new financing includes a two-year grace period and is in addition to $3.5bn that KUFPEC has borrowed from banks since 2013. The company will finish repaying the $3.5bn next year, Sheikh Nawaf Al Sabah told a news conference in Kuwait. It is currently producing 8,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day in Canada and plans to gradually increase output there by drilling a total of 2,000 wells, Al Sabah said. KUFPEC, a subsidiary of state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), aims to boost its output to 150,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed) by 2020 from 119,000 boed now, a level it will maintain until 2040, KUFPEC’s CEO noted. He also said the company was currently studying new future oil and gas acquisitions abroad, without specifying more details. Al Sabah further noted that the company’s total assets are currently about seven billion dollars. Regarding the company’s total reserves, he said they currently comprise 494 million barrels of oil equivalent, and the Canadian project will add 28 million to that. Achieving KUFPEC’s foreign production target has been a multinational effort. The company is producing 38,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day in Australia, and it has drilled 120 wells to produce gas and condensates at shale fields in Canada’s Alberta province. The project’s development plan aims to provide the Australian market with gas while also having the right to transfer part of the production to Kuwait should the need arise, Al Sabah stressed.