KUWAIT CITY- Procedures for drilling and construction work on the Durra gas field will begin later this year after engineering studies wrap up later this summer, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation's (KPC) CEO told Reuters on Thursday.

Iran, which claims a stake in Durra, has criticised a Kuwaiti-Saudi development agreement for the field signed in 2022. Durra holds an estimated 20 trillion cubic feet in proven reserves.

Iran's oil ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kuwait's oil minister at the time last year said that his country and Saudi Arabia had exclusive rights in Durra and called on Iran to validate its claim by demarcating its own maritime borders.

KPC will this summer "finish updating the engineering studies and then begin the procedures for drilling and facilities construction," CEO Sheikh Nawaf Saud Al-Sabah said in an interview.

Kuwait has begun steps to build an onshore gas processing receiving facility, part of a Durra-related agreement with Saudi Arabia for each country to build those facilities, Sheikh Nawaf said.

Sheikh Nawaf also said that KPC would reach a production capacity of 3.2 million barrels per day (bpd) by the end of this year and expects to increase that to 4 million bpd by 2035.

The company plans to invest 7 billion Kuwaiti dinars ($22.92 billion) on its upstream operations over the next five years to boost production, he said.

KPC subsidiary Kuwait Oil Company's CEO Ahmed Jaber Al-Eidan said in October Kuwait's production capacity was 2.9 million bpd and would reach 3.2 million bpd by 2025 or 2026.

Kuwait last year announced a strategy to boost its overall oil production capacity to four million bpd by 2035 and a KPC executive said it would spend $410 billion through 2040.

($1 = 0.3055 Kuwaiti dinars)

(Reporting by Ahmed Hagagy; Writing by Yousef Saba; editing by Jason Neely and David Evans)