News
10 August 2018

WLPGA Member Focus – Kuwait Oil Tanker Company (KOTC)

This month's Member Focus is dedicated to Kuwaiti based WLPGA member Kuwait Oil Tanker Company (KOTC) mainly involved in the ownership and management of tankers engaged in the transport of crude oil, refined petroleum products and liquefied petroleum gases (LPG).

KOTC was founded in April 1957, by a group of Kuwaiti pioneer investors, who had a vision of how important seaborne transportation would be for the development of oil industry and how essential it becomes to exploit and discover oil in Kuwait.

As Oil becomes the major source of energy and the world demands increased substantially, its transport in crude, refined and liquefied product forms did indeed develop into an important part of the marketing activity. Thus in 1976, the government decided to become a partner to KOTC with a 49 % share capital, thereby providing a strong and vital boost to its development. Three years later, in June 1979, in conformity with plans to bring all its oil operations, from the well to the ultimate consumer, under one corporation, the government acquired full control of the Company's capital. When Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) was established in January 1980, KOTC assumed responsibility for the transportation sector of KPC.

In 1960, KOTC was granted the franchise of marketing and distributing liquefied gas into the local market as an alternative to the domestic fuel. In 1962, an LPG Filling Plant was established in Shuwaikh Industrial Area. However, due to the increasing of population in Kuwait, it became necessary to increase plant production capacity in order to meet the required consumption. It was difficult to increase the production capacity with the limited size of that plant. Therefore, a new plant for LPG Operations “re-named as LPG Filling Branch (Shuaiba)” was built in Shuaiba Industrial Area. This plant has been put into operation in 1985 with an idle production capacity of 7 Million LPG cylinders/year. In an effort to develop & increase the strategic reserves of LPG, KOTC announced in 2008 the commissioning of 6 LPG Mounded Tanks with storage capacity of 6,000 metric tons of LPG.

With the continued increase of LPG consumption in the local market demand, the company envisaged to build a new LPG Filling Plant in order to serve the urban expansion of residential areas at the north side of Kuwait. The new land has been allocated in Umm Al-Aish Area. Consequently, the company has signed a contract with international contractor in late 2010, for the design & build a new LPG Filling Plant. In early 2015, the new plant in Umm Al-Aish area has entered into service with idle production capacity of 14.5 million Cyl./year. with such production capacities using the state-of-the-art-technologies of both plants, KOTC will fulfill the local market demand of LPG till year 2030. The company pays a lot of concern in providing assurance of quality and safety of this product and service to consumers in the state of Kuwait.