"Annual growth is around 5-6 percent and is going to
continue at this level as things stand now," Ahmed Al-Sa'adi, vice
president of gas operations at Aramco, told Reuters on the sidelines of an
industry conference in Doha.
"There is a lot of effort in adopting energy
efficient programs to curtail demand," he said when asked about what could
contribute to a drop in demand.
Saudi is raising gas production from non-associated gas
fields to cater for rising domestic demand which has been growing by 7 percent
annually in recent years due to an economic boom fueled by the oil price rally.
Aramco is currently developing Karan, its first
non-associated offshore gas field project, which is expected to be completed in
2013.
It is also working on two new projects, the Wasit gas
development program and Shaybah natural gas liquids (NGL) which Sa'adi said
would be online by mid-2014.
Wasit, along with Khursaniyah and Karan gas plants, would
help the Kingdom process its targeted production increase of unprocessed
natural gas to 15.5 billion cubic feet per day (cfd) by 2015 from 10.2 billion
cfd.
Aramco is currently reviewing onshore bids for Wasit.
Wasit would be designed to process 2.5 billion cfdf gas from the offshore
non-associated sour gas fields Arabiyah and Hasbah and produce around 1.75 billion
cfd of sales gas.
Sa'adi did not give a cost estimate for the Wasit and
Shaybah NGL program. Industry sources said Wasit would cost between $6 billion
and $8 billion while Shaybah's cost ranges between $5 billion and $6 billion.
Aramco's gas reserves stood at 275.2 trillion cubic feet
in 2009, of which 50 percent was not associated with oil output.
