Saudi Aramco Sees Karan Gas Project Completion Ahead of Schedule
January 14, 2012, 12:21 PM ESTBy Wael Mahdi
Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Saudi Arabian Oil Co. increased output from its offshore Karan natural-gas deposit and expects to reach full capacity this summer, a year ahead of schedule, Chief Executive Officer Khalid al-Falih said.
The state oil company said in July last year that Karan would reach full capacity of 1.8 million barrels a day in 2013, and would feed into the Khursaniyah processing plant. Saudi Aramco, as the company is known, originally aimed to produce 1.5 billion cubic feet a day by June this year, according to the Dhahran-based company’s 2010 annual review.
Aramco is accelerating work at the project as demand for gas in Saudi Arabia grows rapidly. With electricity consumption rising by about 8 percent a year, the country wants to produce more gas to run power plants and save valuable oil for exports.
Aramco has another major project under way to pump 2.5 billion cubic feet a day of gas from Hasbah and Arabia fields. The project will be onstream in 2014, al-Falih told reporters today in Dhahran.
Saudi Arabia holds the world’s largest oil reserves and the fifth-largest gas deposits, according to BP Plc’s Statistical Review of World Energy. The kingdom used 8.1 billion cubic feet of gas a day last year, BP data show.
--Editors: Alex Devine, Andrew Rummer
To contact the reporter on this story: Wael Mahdi in Cairo at wmahdi@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.net -0- Jan/14/2012 15:06 GMT
