Oman's PDO says to lift oil output 5 pct in four years

By Fatma Alarimi

MUSCAT, April 13 (Reuters) - State-controlled Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), the country's top oil and gas producer, aims to lift crude output by about 5 percent over the next four years, managing director Raoul Restucci said on Monday.

"We aspire to reach 600,000 barrels per day by 2019," he told reporters at an annual briefing on Oman's energy industry, adding the company would then maintain that production level for 10 years.

PDO's planned average output for this year is 570,000 bpd, although it exceeded that amount in the first two months of the year, Restucci said in March.

He said on Monday that PDO planned to invest over $40 billion in its projects by 2019, but did not specify where the company would obtain the money.

PDO is owned 60 percent by Oman's government, 34 percent by Royal Dutch Shell (Xetra: R6C1.DE - news) , 4 percent by Total (Swiss: FP.SW - news) and 2 percent by Portugal's Partex, according to its website.

Salim Nasser al-Aufi, undersecretary at the Ministry of Oil and Gas, told the same briefing that government spending on Oman's oil sector totalled $8.7 billion last year while spending on natural gas production was $2.8 billion.

Oman lacks the ample oil and financial reserves of its wealthy Gulf neighbours and its state budget has been hit hard by the decline of oil prices.

But it is spending heavily to upgrade its energy industry infrastructure and boost production. Oman hopes to increase its total crude oil output by 5 percent to 1 million bpd this year, Aufi said last month.

Issam al-Zadjali, chief executive of state-owned energy investment firm Oman Oil Co (OOC), said on Monday that OOC would refocus more of its investments inside the country.

Sixty-five percent of the company's current investments are local; its investments in Europe are doing well but not those in India and China, Zadjali added.

OOC and its partners had invested a total of 9.4 billion rials ($24.4 billion) in companies within Oman as of 2013, according to its latest annual report.

State-owned Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Co (ORPIC) suffered a loss of $4 million last year, instead of the $725 million profit for which it was aiming, chief executive Musab al-Mahrouqi told the briefing.

Changes in the market environment as oil prices plunged cost the company $571 million, while technical problems at ORPIC's Sohar refinery cut operations at its main refining unit by 76 percent, costing a further $111 million. (Writing by Andrew Torchia)