Feeling good about the future: Naimi expects joint ventures to find gas.
Saudis expect more gas discoveries
Saudi Arabia expects to make additional natural gas discoveries from joint ventures of its national oil company and foreign firms, the country’s oil minister said.
Saudi Aramco’s discovered gas reserves were 267 trillion cubic feet at the end of last year, Ali Naimi said in a speech in Dhahran.
Gas production averaged 8.3 billion cubic feet a day last year, Aramco said in its annual report last week.
Consumption is growing at 7% per year, Naimi said.
The country has enlisted help from foreign companies to search for gas, including joint ventures with Anglo-Dutch supermajor Shell, Russia’s Lukoil, China’s Sinopec, and Italian giant Eni and Spanish giant Repsol YPF.
The four ventures completed 18 of 27 exploration wells last year, and four of the remaining wells were being drilled at the end of year, Aramco said in a Bloomberg report.
The kingdom plans to boost gas-processing capacity to 12.5 Bcfpd from 9.3 Bcfpd, according to Aramco.
The Khursaniyah gas plant will have a processing capacity of 1 Bcfpd when it is completed mid-year.
The plant will be able to produce 560 million cubic feet per day of sales gas and 280,000 barrels per day of ethane and natural gas liquids, Aramco said.
The Hawiyah gas plant is being expanded to process a further 800 MMcfpd once completed in the first half of the year, raising the plant’s capacity to 2.4 Bcfpd.
Aramco’s first offshore gas field, Karan, will produce 1.8 Bcfpd of gas from early 2012.