Saudi Arabia: Aramco Seeking to Expand Downstream Activities
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Wednesday, 26 October 2011 |
State oil firm Aramco has announced that it will continue to expand its downstream activities, and aims to increase its domestic refining output capacity to 3.5million bpd by 2016. Mohammed al-Omair, Vice President of Refining and Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) Fractionation at Saudi Aramco, told an industry conference that the start up of new plants was key to the process. "Soon we will see additions to this picture," he remarked.
Three refineries are currently under development with a projected capacity of 400,000 bpd each. "We can see that total current in-kingdom refining capacity is 2.26 million bpd. With the addition of the three facilities, the capacity will have increased...in 2016 to almost 3.5 million bpd," said al-Omair.” The first is our joint venture in Jubail with Total (Satorp), it will begin commissioning in 2012. Red Sea refining in Yanbu will begin commissioning in 2014, and Jizan refinery in 2016, while each of the new refineries will be designed keeping petrochemical products such as benzene, xylene and paraxylene in mind. Sasref (Aramco-Shell Jubail refinery) is already producing benzene."
Asked about investments in Vietnam, Indonesia and China, al-Omair said that more investment was planned, but would take time. "We continue talks about expansions. I am sure it will yield results, but investments in the international (market) do take a lot of time before we get to see things happening in reality but these are part of the portfolio Saudi Aramco has as plans for the downstream investments," he confirmed.
PetrolWorld 26102011
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