Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi says the country is overly dependent on exporting crude, and together with a senior official has vowed to hugely increase the kingdom’s downstream exports in a bid to diversify is export income and create opportunities for the country’s increasing young population.
“Our dependency on crude export is a challenge that we need to overcome,” Al-Naimi told the Saudi Downstream Forum today in Jubail. “Our on-going downstream projects will allow us to lessen our dependency on crude export and will add value to our crude,” he added.
The increase of local population is putting more pressure on job creation in the Kingdom. “Population is set to reach 30 million inhabitants by 2020 from current 20 million. Job demand increases by 300,000 applicants per year, which require more opportunities to be created,” Al-Naimi said. “We will focus on selling end products rather than crude oil.”
“Raw, or half-manufactured materials are exported to the outside world then re-imported back into the Kingdom as finished products, thus depriving the country, the citizen and the national economy as a whole of a lot of important investment opportunities which have the potential to create new jobs,” Al-Naimi said.
Saudi Arabia is expected to be the world’s third largest petrochemical exporter by 2015, according to Prince Saud bin Thanian, chairman of the royal commission of key refinery centres Jubail and Yanbu.
“Petrochemicals plays a vital role in our life, and it is a major contributor of the economy diversification,” Prince Saud said.
“Currently, we control 8% of the global petrochemical market,” he said. “By 2015, our market share will be 15%, allowing the Kingdom to be the third largest petrochemical exporter in the world.”
