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The CEO of hydrocarbon giant Saudi Aramco has said that the company will most likely leave a number of fields idle in 2010 due to there being no discernable recovery in global oil demand.
In an interview with the news agency Bloomberg, Khalid al-Falih said that the KSA currently has a spare capacity of 4 million barrels per day (bpd) and has trimmed 14% of its daily output to comply with OPEC production cuts.
The move has been successful in propping up the oil price, which is hovering around the US$70 a barrel mark compared to it being under $40 a barrel at the start of the year.
“We’re prepared for the long-haul. We have the excess capacity in case it’s needed but we also have the ability to sustain ourselves with production levels similar to what we see today at prices similar to what we have seen so far,” Falih is reported by Bloomberg as saying.
“I don’t expect a major shift in demand unless we see an acceleration of the economic recovery, which is not yet apparent,” he added.
The Aramco CEO also said that the company is spending $90 billion on developing new reserves, infrastructure and refining over five years up until 2012.
