KUWAIT: Kuwait was confident that the country's legislature would pass a long-delayed plan to explore northern oilfields with the help from foreign firms, reports said yesterday.

The northern oilfields, crucial to plans to raise output capacity, have been delayed for years by legislators who say the plan could give foreign firms control over the country's oil wealth.

Kuwait, which has around 10 per cent of the world's oil reserves, plans to raise its capacity to four million barrels per day oil by 2020.

It produced about 2.55m barrels per day last month, according to a Reuters survey.

"The recently approved laws like the law on privatising Kuwait Airways ... are important and I am sure that other new laws will also be approved as easily," Prime Minister Shaikh Nasser Al Mohammad Al Sabah said.

"Some of the important laws which will be sent for approval are the Companies Law, the Stock Exchange Market Law, and the Northern Oilfields Law," he added.

Kuwait, the world's seventh-largest oil exporter, estimated the cost of the project at $8.5 billion three years ago. The plan envisages exploring four oilfields in the north of the country.

"I am very optimistic these days because of the conducive atmosphere in parliament," Shaikh Nasser said.

Meanwhile, top oil official said Kuwait was set to start its first commercial production of non-associated natural gas in March after missing a target date last month.

The first of a four-phase plan will produce 175m cubic feet of free gas and 50,000 barrels per day of light oil and condensates, said the deputy director of Kuwait Oil Company Hashem Hashem.