Moneefa to go online

In 2013, Saudi Arabia plans to bring online Moneefa, the last of the giant oilfield projects on its expansion slate, an official at state oil giant Saudi Aramco said.

Aramco slowed work at the 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) Moneefa project as it looked to cut costs on oil service contracts at the field and across its energy industry.

As there's been a slump in global energy demand, it has made further oilfield development less urgent for the world's top oil exporter, Arabian Business reports.

After delaying the project this year, no further delays were envisaged for now, Aramco's Vice President of Northern Area Oil Operations Fahad al-Moosa told reporters on the sidelines of an energy conference in Bahrain.

"Sometime in 2013, it is on schedule," Moosa said. "We are working on the detailed design."

Earlier in the year

Previously, Aramco delayed the start date for the multi-billion dollar project to 2013 from the initial schedule of 2011.

Early work on building a causeway to offshore facilities is near completion, and site preparation work is underway, he added.

Saudi Arabia reached crude capacity of 12.5 million bpd this year bringing on line fields including the 1.2 million bpd Khurais, the largest ever single addition to global oil production capacity.

Aramco is developing Moneefa to compensate for declining capacity at other fields rather than to further boost total Saudi capacity.

The kingdom has outlined plans to boost capacity to 15 million bpd, but sees no need to do so until global demand erodes spare capacity. It is pumping around 8 million bpd and is sitting on around 4.5 million of idled infrastructure.

Aramco plans to process Moneefa's heavy crude at two new 400,000 bpd joint venture refineries. It is building one of the plants with France's Total and another with US major ConocoPhillips.

The world's largest offshore oilfield at Safaniyah has capacity to pump around 1.3 million bpd, said Abdulla al-Kubaisy, manager of Safaniyah's offshore production department at Aramco. Kubaisy, speaking at the same event as Moosah, declined to say what actual output was.

Earlier this month, an industry source said output at the field was around 600,000 bpd.

 

Like this article? Get the RSS feed:

blog comments powered by Disqus