Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company (Kufpec), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kuwait Petroleum Corp, has signed a $1 billion loan, it said.

Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi-UFJ, HSBC, JP Morgan, National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) and Royal Bank of Scotland acted as underwriters, joint bookrunners and initial mandated lead arrangers for the loan, the company said in a statement on the Kuwait News Agency website. JP Morgan and NBK also acted as joint co-ordinators, it said.

Reuters reported last month that Kufpec had launched the five-year amortising term loan into syndication.

Kufpec, which is responsible for exploration, development and production of crude oil and natural gas outside Kuwait, said it was aiming to raise its output to 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day with reserves of 650 million barrels of oil equivalent by 2020. It is active in 15 countries, with 63 projects in the international upstream sector, it added.-Reuters