São Paulo – Saudi Aramco, the Saudi state-owned oil company, should increase its efforts to expand and develop further oil wells. The objective, according to the ministry of Oil and Natural Resources, Ali Al-Naimi, is to supply the needs of generation of electric energy in the country. The information was disclosed on Monday (07) by paper Arab News.
“King Abdullah [Al Saud] has given instructions to carry out more gas drilling and development operations … to use gas, instead of oil, for electricity generation, as oil can be exported or kept for future generations,” said Naimi, according to the publication.
The minister stated that Saudi Aramco is promoting new drilling operations in the city of Tabuk, close to the Red Sea. “For the first time in its 80 years of history, Aramco has started operating a modern drilling vessel, developed to operate in deep waters to find oil and gas in the Red Sea,” he said.
After inspecting the installations of Tabuk, Naimi said to the press that the result of a geological study and of drilling works show that there is much gas and oil in the region. “The region has substantial reserves of oil and gas in commercial quantities.”
“Although there is a lot of oil and gas wealth and shale gas in different parts of the Kingdom, I would like to tell you that the discovery and development of these oil and gas wells will take a long time,” added the minister. Khaled Al-Falih, CEO at Saudi Aramco. He went on to say that the company should work in seven fields in the first phase, being some of them in deep waters in the Red Sea.
In 2011, Saudi Aramco produced on average 280 million cubic metres a day, while gas reserves totalled 8.478 trillion cubic metres.
*Translated by Mark Ament
