Kuwait Oil Company said on Wednesday it had awarded Petrofac a KD123.3 million ($430.8 million) contract to inject mixed effluent and seawater into 69 wells in northern Kuwait.

The project in Sabriyah and Rawdatain oil fields is part of efforts to reach a production target of one million barrels a day by 2015 from Kuwait's northern oil fields, the state-owned firm said in a statement.

Petrofac was the lowest bidder for the project, it said without elaborating.

Petrofac shares were down 0.08 per cent at 1,298 pence as of 1121 GMT, performing slightly better than the FTSE 100 index which was off 0.96 per cent.

'The project is very critical to increase and sustain oil production from NK (northern Kuwait) fields through collection and injection of produced effluent water and seawater,' KOC said.

Kuwait is the world's fourth largest oil exporter and has a production capacity of 3.17 million barrels a day. The Opec member is targeting 3.5 million bpd in 2015 before expanding to 4 million bpd in 2020.

Last week, KOC awarded Hyundai Engineering and Construction and Petrofac contracts worth KD520 million to design and build pipelines. – Reuters