The country's oil minister, Ali al-Omair, told the same conference that Kuwait would nevertheless continue developing its production and refining capacity.

"Despite the atmosphere of falling oil prices, we in Kuwait are determined to expedite finalising the big oil projects..." Omair said, adding that the country planned to spend $100 billion (66 billion pounds) in the next five years on such projects.

Kuwait has a long-term plan to boost its crude oil production capacity to 4 million barrels per day by 2020‎ from around 3.15 million bpd now. Adsani said the country had the ability to reach 3.5 mln bpd of capacity by the end of 2015.

(Reporting by Rania El Gamal; Writing by Andrew Torchia)