Aramco To Spend $133B On Drilling Over The Next Decade

Saudi Arabia’s state oil firm Saudi Aramco plans to spend more than US$133.3 billion (500 billion Saudi riyals) on oil and gas drilling over the next decade, Saudi Aramco’s Senior Vice President for Upstream said at an event on Monday.  

Speaking at a graduation ceremony at the Saudi Arabian Drilling Academy (SADA), Aramco’s Mohammed Al-Qahtani said that local talent and skills will be important for the industry “as we will spend more than half a trillion Saudi Riyals on drilling activities over the next decade, in compliance with the goals and objectives of the ambitious Saudi Vision 2030.”

While Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 for economic growth and diversification initially rested on what was thought to be huge proceeds from the initial public offering (IPO) of Saudi Aramco, the listing has been stalled, and possibly called off.

Still, Saudi Arabia needs to develop more oil and gas fields to offset the production decline from the mature fields that have already been pumping oil for decades.

Earlier this month, Saudi Aramco awarded to Baker Hughes the first integrated services contract for capacity expansion of its large offshore Marjan oilfield, the Saudi firm’s biggest upstream development this year and the first of three planned major offshore expansions.

The other offshore expansions two will be for the Zuluf and Berri offshore fields, which currently have capacity of 800,000 bpd and 200,000 bpd, respectively, S&P Global Platts data shows. The three major offshore expansion plans are expected to add 1 million bpd of production capacity by 2023.  

Last week, Aramco awarded a contract to China Harbour Engineering Arabia to build two man-made drilling islands to support the Berri field production capacity islands, as part of the plan to increase production at the field. Saudi Aramco’s Berri Increment Program (BIP) targets to double crude oil production from the Berri Oil Field by 250,000 bpd to reach 500,000 bpd by early 2023, the company says.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oiprice.com

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