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The CEO of the state-owned hydrocarbons giant Saudi Aramco has told a Saudi newspaper that the company’s output capacity reached 12 million barrels per day (bpd) in June.
Speaking to the al-Hayat newspaper, Khalid al-Falih said that the figure was reached after the start-up of three new upstream projects in the Kingdom.
“Production capacity of the company was 12 million barrels per day in June, when output started from three fields which are Nuayyim, Khurais and Shaybah,” al-Hayat reported Falih as saying.
Estimates for Aramco’s current output are around the 8 million bpd mark due to agreed OPEC production cuts. This leaves the KSA with around 4.5 million bpd of spare capacity.
The Kingdom’s extra 500,000 bpd come from the shared Neutral Zone with Kuwait which does not count towards Aramco’s output figures.
“We have a strong [capacity] surplus that has allowed us to reduce our operations in the oil producing sector and related drilling operations,” Falih said. “And this has allowed us to double our operations in the production of non-associated gas.”
Saudi Arabia has increased its upstream gas activity as domestic demand has soared.
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