Khurais on schedule to raise oil capacity ( Saudi Arabia boosting Oil production )

Arab News ^ | Wednesday 25 June 2008 | K.S. Ramkumar | Arab News K.S. Ramkumar | Arab News K.S. Ramkumar | Arab News

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Khurais on schedule to raise oil capacity
K.S. Ramkumar | Arab News

br>MEDIA TOUR: Workers look at journalists during a media tour of the Khurais oilfield, located between Riyadh and Dhahran, on Monday. (AP)

KHURAIS OILFIELD: Saudi Aramco has assured that it would fulfill its commitment to raise oil capacity by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) by June 2009 through the new Khurais oilfield.

“This is the biggest new field in our plan to raise oil capacity and we are on schedule,” Amin Nasser, Saudi Aramco’s senior vice president for exploration and production, told a large group of national and international journalists at the Khurais project site.

“The Khurais project, 160 km south of Riyadh and 250 km southwest of Dhahran, will surely avoid the delays that have plagued the global energy sector,” said Nasser who was accompanied by Saudi Aramco’s other senior executives including Dr. Muhammad M. Al-Saggaf, manager, EXPEC Advanced Research Center, Khalid Abdulqader, manager of Khurais program, Mohammed Al-Rabeh, manager of Khurais Central Processing Facilities (KCPF), and Fahad A. Ajmi, general supervisor of the project’s reservoir management.

The journalists were flown in a charter plane to the $10 billion Khurais project on Monday, the day the Council of Ministers commended the Jeddah Energy Meeting’s positive outcome in terms of discussing future plans to stabilize the international oil market. The meeting of oil consumers and producers, opened by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah on Sunday, in the presence of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and some overseas ministerial delegations including those headed by US Energy Secretary Sam Bodman and Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, made new proposals to meet global economic challenges in the wake of rising oil prices.

Saudi Aramco’s assurance came a day after Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi told the summit that the Kingdom would pump enough oil to meet demand and pledged to add to existing plans to increase output potential.

“We are 100 percent confident that Khurais will come on stream as planned in June 2009,” Al-Nasser said, adding that a major boost to capacity will also come from Khursaniyah oilfield from August, a few months after its set deadline. “Even with a slight delay, it took 41 months from start to finish compared to the world average of 53 months, still Khursaniyah is doing very well,” he said.

The Khurais project site presents a scene of steel girders, storage tanks and pipelines that are being constructed by about 28,000 workers.

The giant processing plant will handle oil from the Abu Jifan and Mazalij fields, as well as Khurais. Together the fields will produce more oil than each of the three smallest members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries: Indonesia, Qatar and Ecuador.

The oil the Saudi fields contain is highly prized Arab Light oil, which is easily converted into transport fuel.

The new fields are near the world’s largest oilfield at Ghawar, which has produced for around half a century.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

More detail:

Saudis show journalists huge oil project

*************************EXCERPT*************************

KHURAIS, Saudi Arabia, June 24 (UPI) -- Saudi Arabia is a year away from completing an oil-pumping project it says will equal growing global demands for oil, Aramco officials said.

The project joins oil fields at Khurais, Abu Jifan and Mazalij with one system that will inject more than 2 million barrels of seawater underground every day in order to push an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil to the surface, the Dallas Morning News reported Tuesday.

Saudis hope to add 1.2 million barrels a day to the world's oil supply, the report said.

The fields hold more oil than all of the reserves owned by the United States, but skeptics said the saltwater pumping technique -- generally used with fields after they've been in production for a while -- proves reserves in Saudi Arabia are running low, the report said.

Amin Nasser, Aramco senior vice president for production and exploration, said the saltwater pumping was used to trim costs.

[JeepInMazar]

Saudi Christians

[NRG1973]

The world is currently “short” by about 2 million barrels per day. If the Saudis open this new oilfield on time (June 2009) and it truly yields 1.2 million bpd then the world will still be “short” by 0.8 million bpd. And, oil demand is growing by more than 1 million bpd per year so, the world would be back to being “short” by 2 million bpd.

[thackney]

Where do you find the “short” figure of 2 MMBPD?

[CharlesWayneCT]

Look!! not only are they providing oil, but they are helping lower the ocean level to counteract the effects of global warming:

The project joins oil fields at Khurais, Abu Jifan and Mazalij with one system that will inject more than 2 million barrels of seawater underground every day...

:-)

[NRG1973]

Where do you find the “short” figure of 2 MMBPD?

From those in the industry who have estimated that 2 million bpd of demand has been destroyed (by higher oil prices) over the last 4 years. We, in America, don't see that demand destruction because it has happened in a lot of small developing countries who have been "priced out of the market". We may some demand destruction in America when oil prices go from $140 to $200 per barrel.

[thackney]

From those in the industry who have estimated that 2 million bpd of demand has been destroyed (by higher oil prices) over the last 4 years.

Demand is a curve of quantity versus price. Higher price doesn't destroy demand, it move up the curve.

And just the opposite is true for supply. Those ultra-deepwater wells are not going to get drilled and the oil sands won't continue to expand with the price of the late 1990s.

in America, don't see that demand destruction because it has happened in a lot of small developing countries who have been "priced out of the market".

Just the opposite has been happening. Most of the world's growth in oil demand has been in developing countries outside the OECD.