ABU DHABI Ñ Kuwait has approved a plan to double the sheikdom's crude oil output.

Kuwait's Energy Ministry has approved the first stage of a plan to double oil production to four million barrels a day by 2020. Officials said the plan will develop and produce oil from the north and west of the sheikdom.

Mohammed Hussein, assistant executive of the managing director of the state-owned Kuwait Oil Co. said sheikdom intends to develop the so-called hard oil fields near the border with Iraq, which produces 45,000 barrels of oil per day. Hussein said this would require participation of international oil companies to introduce advanced technology.

The Kuwaiti company plans to produce three million barrels of oil per day in 2005, 3.5 million in 2015 and four million barrels per day in 2020, Hussein said. Currently, Kuwait produces 2.2 million barrels of oil per day. Meanwhile, Qatar has signed a $7 billion contract with ExxonMobil to construct a gas-to-liquids plant.

The official Qatari news agency said the contract was signed on Wednesday in Doha by Qatari Energy Minister Abdullah Bin Hamad Al Attiyah and ExxonMobil's deputy executive president, Harry Longwell. The fully-integrated GTL plant would be located in Ras Laffan and financed by ExxonMobil.

Al Attiyah said the LNG plant would produce 154,000 barrels of GTL and related products. He said this would include clean diesel, naphtha, and various oil projects.

"The project constitutes a great step on the way of achieving the emir of Qatar's ambitious plan of exploiting the country's natural resources to diversify the sources of national income and secure development for the interest of the emirate and its people," Al Attiyah said.