Al-Naimi highlights future investments
Posted: 18 September 2006
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Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali I. Al-Naimi highlighted Saudi Arabia 's oil and gas investment outlook and strategies in a speech Sept. 12 at the third International Seminar of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) at Vienna 's Hofburg Palace. After discussing the evolving global energy scene, Al-Naimi stressed that the Middle East continues to play a central role in satisfying global growth in demand, production and trade.
 Al-Naimi (Picture) went on to say that while the world's attention is focused primarily on crude-oil production capacity, meeting global demand also requires timely investment along the entire oil and gas value chains.
He added: "The industry must deal with a stretched refining system and match refining capacity to the anticipated future slate of crude oil that is becoming heavier and more sour, as well as attend to the infrastructure bottlenecks in pipelines, terminals, shipping and critical sea channels."
Al-Naimi noted that Saudi Arabia 's oil and gas upstream and downstream investment programs will total some $70 billion over the next five years.
He said: "The key considerations guiding our capacity expansion plans include the assessment of market demand for our oil, our national development objective, the profitability of various available oil development opportunities, and oil field and reservoir factors."
Referring to the Kingdom's plans to bring on-stream increments totaling 2.35 million barrels per day (bpd) from seven fields, Al-Naimi said that production capacity is estimated to reach 12.5 million bpd by 2009.
The minister noted that although the lion's share of global attention is focused on the Kingdom's upstream oil capacity expansion, the country is also doing its part to increase and upgrade refining and related capacities worldwide and also is focusing on downstream capacity expansion.
During the two-day seminar, Saudi Aramco is sponsoring the luncheon on the second day and also the conference's three coffee breaks, during which Saudi Aramco is offering delegates Arabic coffee and dates from an Arabian tent.
Children's paintings from the Saudi Aramco children's art contest are on display during the conference. |
