Saudi Arabia to begin pumping on Khurais oil field shortly
Saudi Aramco's core area in Dhahran city
The world's insatiable demand for petroleum is about to cause more drilling and pumping in Saudi Arabia, as the country is set to begin setting up shop on the Khurais oil field. A ten-billion dollar investment will be made which is expected to allow the nation to pump one and a half billion additional barrels of oil per day by the end of next year. The project, which is already expected to begin shipping over a million barrels of oil beginning next June, is a massive undertaking.
Saudi Arabia has, to this point, resisted producing additional oil, as it believes there is no shortage at all. Instead, the country points to the low value of the U.S. dollar and unrealistic speculators are the major driving forces behind the record-high oil prices. Still, the country remains extremely important to major oil-consuming nations such as the United States as it currently produces eleven-percent of the world's daily supply of oil and is the only country left with relatively easy-to-tap oil reserves.
[Source: AP via The Detroit News]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Serge 6:52PM (6/30/2008)
Jeremy, that's "1.2 million barrels per day" not "one and a half billion"
Another interesting piece of information is that the
Khursaniyah field, which was originally scheduled to begin pumping 500,000 barrels per day at the end of 2007 will allegedly come online in August.
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Mike Z 7:30PM (6/30/2008)
Also remember that BP's Thunderhorse platform in the Gulf is starting to pump. Also, apparently, Exxon has a 300,000 bpd project off Angola that is apparently suppose to come online soon.
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Paul 8:01PM (6/30/2008)
I guess the Saudis didn't heed the Democrats sage position that drilling for more oil won't do any good.
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GoodCheer 10:11PM (6/30/2008)
Paul: It'll do plenty of good for the countries that have the oil. How much good will it do for those who have none?
It'll make the prices a bit cheaper at the pump for Americans, so we'll buy more SUVs and stay hooked on the stuff.
The world consumes about 83 million bpd, so the projected volume of this field, 27 billion barrels, could be consumed in a little under a year (if it could be extracted fast enough).
The US imports about 12 million bpd, so the output of this field will only be 10% of our imports. I'm not sure what the sage predictions were, but 10 years from now things could be really interesting.
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Neil 2:10AM (7/01/2008)
I've been expecting oil prices to retreat a little in the fall. I certainly hope people don't forget the lessons learned on this upswing of the roller coaster. The IEA report this year should make for interesting reading since AFAIK this will be the first year that they won't be simply assuming that demand will be the determining factor for supply.
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montoym 8:13PM (7/01/2008)
@ GoodCheer:
The US happens to be one of those countries that happens to have the oil. We just aren't allowed to get it. It's true that much of it is not as easy(read: cheap) to extract as the oil fields in Saudi Arabia, but at the current prices, it's become economically viable.
Your extrapolation of the amount of oil in the Khurais fields is meaningless. You are making the assumption that it's the only field out there. This is the very reason for continuing to find and develop new oil fields.
Regarding you comment about the field only covering 10% of our imports. So what? If we drilled our own oil, it would be even less than 10%. Wouldn't that make you happier? We'd be less dependent on foreign oil after all.
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