Saudi Aramco to Start Khursaniyah Output

Saudi Aramco to Start Khursaniyah Oil Output by April
By Nidaa Bakhsh and Grant Smith
Feb. 18 (Bloomberg)

Saudi Aramco, the world's largest state-owned oil company, will start production from its Khursaniyah oil-field project by April.

``Khursaniyah will make available 500,000 barrels a day within two months,'' Senior Vice President Khalid Buainain said today at a conference in London.

The start of output was delayed from December to allow ``commissioning activities'' to be completed. Saudi Arabia, like other Persian Gulf oil producers, is implementing large-scale energy projects to boost crude oil and refining capacity to meet rising demand.

Saudi Aramco plans to produce 12 million barrels a day by 2009 from all its fields, Buainain said. An additional 250,000 barrels a day this year from the Shaybah field, in the southeast desert known as the Empty Quarter, will bring total output to 750,000 barrels a day. It's also planning to pump 1.2 million barrels a day from the Khurais field by mid-2009, and expects production from the Manifa field will reach 900,000 barrels a day from 2011.

The company expects to see no drop in demand from the U.S. for crude oil even as economic growth slows, Buainain said. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, whose members produce more than 40 percent of the world's oil, and the Paris- based International Energy Agency, cut their estimates for oil demand because of the threat of a U.S.-led global recession. OPEC maintained its output quota at a meeting on Feb. 1.