Thinking big: at Manifa
Aramco names Manifa date
Saudi Arabian giant Saudi Aramco will bring the Manifa oilfield on stream in 2013, a company official said.
Aramco has slowed work at the 900,000 barrels per day development as it looks to save costs on oil and gas service contracts and as a slowdown in global oil demand makes capacity expansion less urgent.
"Sometime in 2013, it is on schedule" Aramco's vice president of Northern area oil operations Fahad al-Moosa told Reuterson the sidelines of an energy conference in Bahrain.
Aramco delayed the start-date for the multi-billion dollar project earlier this year to 2013 from the initial schedule of 2011.
Early work on building a causeway to offshore facilities was near completion, and site preparation work was under way, he added.
Saudi Arabia reached crude capacity of 12.5 million bpd this year. It is developing Moneefa to compensate for declining capacity at other fields rather than to boost total Saudi capacity.
Aramco is developing Manifa to compensate for declining capacity at other fields rather than to further boost total Saudi capacity.
The kingdom has outlined plans to boost capacity to 15 million bpd, but sees no need to do so until global demand erodes spare capacity. It is pumping around 8 million bpd and is sitting on around 4.5 million of idled infrastructure.
Aramco plans to process Manifa's heavy crude at two new 400,000 bpd joint venture refineries. It is building one of the plants with France's Total and another with US supermajor ConocoPhillips.
Safaniyah has capacity to pump around 1.3 million bpd, said Abdulla al-Kubaisy, manager of Safaniyah's offshore production department at Aramco. Kubaisy, speaking at the same event as Moosah, declined to say what actual output was.
Earlier this month, an industry source said output at the field was around 600,000 bpd.
Moosa reiterated that the Saudi Karan gas field would start pumping in mid-2011.
The kingdom is prioritising gas field development to meet rapidly rising domestic demand from power stations and heavy industry. Karan is Saudi Arabia's first offshore gas project not associated with oil production.
Aramco was still looking at plans to develop the Hasbah gas field, Moosa said.
"This is in the early stages and is under review," he said.
Hasbah is one of two offshore gas fields not associated with oil that Aramco discovered in January. The other was Arabiyah. The two together could supply 1.8 billion cubic feet per day of gas.