ABU DHABI: Saudi Arabia will start production at its 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) Khurais oilfield at the end of June, a Saudi Aramco executive said yesterday.
Khurais is the largest of three oilfield projects that will take the Kingdom’s total production capacity to 12.5 million bpd by the end of June.
Although it was not immediately expected to add to the sum of Saudi output, the field represents the biggest ever single increment to global production.
“It’s mechanically completed, and it’s commissioning...and I expect by the end of this month we will have oil production from Khurais,” Abdulaziz Al-Judaimi, vice president for new business development at Aramco, told reporters on the sidelines of an industry conference.
“We will gradually bring on production...depending on what the market needs we will produce, and adjust our production strategy.”
Aramco will also be investing in the development of the Arabiyah and Hasbah gas fields and are expected to make an investment decision on the project in 2010.
The projects would supply around 1.8 billion cubic feet per day (cfd) of gas Al-Judaimi said. The projects were included in Aramco’s expansion plan through 2014.
Al-Judaimi also said that Saudi Aramco’s two major joint ventures with foreign companies face delays. A giant petrochemical plant that Saudi Aramco planned to build with Dow Chemical Co. would start up in 2015, he said. That would be about two years behind the initial schedule.
Engineering and design for that plant should be completed in 2010, Al-Judaimi said.
Saudi Aramco and ConocoPhillips plan to start up their joint venture Saudi Yanbu refinery in late 2014, Al-Judaimi said, a year later than previously scheduled.