The National Bank of Kuwait's investment arm has been selected as exclusive financing adviser for a $12-billion clean fuel refineries project, the bank said in a statement on Sunday.

State-owned Kuwait National Petroleum Co. (KNPC), which owns the mega project, and NBK Capital signed a 12-month contract under which the bank will assess funding requirements and help raise the financing.

KNPC awarded the clean fuel project to upgrade two of three refineries to three international consortia in April and also invited bids to build a new 615,000-barrel refinery at an estimated cost of $15 billion.

The clean fuel project, to modernise Al-Ahmadi and Mina Abdullah refineries to produce environment-friendly petroleum products, is scheduled to be completed in 2018.

Once complete, the capacity of the two refineries will increase from 730,000 barrels per day to 800,000.

When the two projects are completed, Kuwait will have a refining capacity of more than 1.4 million barrels per day from the current 930,000 bpd.