Page 11 - MEOG Week 40 2021

MEOG PROJECTS & COMPANIES MEOG

Aramco aims to increase

capacity by 2027

SAUDI ARABIA SAUDI Aramco said this week that it would The Berri and Marjan increments are
achieve the Ministry of Energy’s (MoE) goal of designed to more than double oil production
increasing its maximum sustainable capacity capacity from the assets to a combined 1.35mn
(MSC) by 1mn barrels per day (bpd) by 2027. bpd at a cost of around $18bn.
Speaking during this week’s Energy Intelli- They are also expected to result in the pro-
gence forum, President and CEO Amin Nasser duction of up to 2.5bn cubic feet (71mn cubic
said that the company was working “as fast as we metres) per day of associated gas, which will be
can” to boost output from 12mn bpd to 13mn piped to the Berri gas plant.
bpd following an MoE mandate in March 2020. However, both projects have been on the table
“That additional 1mn bpd will take a couple since well before the instruction to increase MSC
of years; it’s not going to come at full capacity at was received, having been delayed repeatedly.
13mn bpd until 2027,” he said, noting: “It takes Earlier in the year Aramco completed and
years, 2-3 years between front-end engineering, tied in the ‘Ain Dar and Fazran crude increment
and then construction will take also another projects to target additional combined capacity
3-4 years.” Nasser said: “We are doing our share of 175,000 bpd and kicked off the first phase
in terms of building [capacity] even though of the Dammam development project to add
we have adequate spare capacity today. We are 25,000 bpd in 2024 and 50,000 bpd in 2026.
bringing additional supplies to the market, while Despite crude price volatility and the coro-
we’re working on reducing our emissions at the navirus (COVID-19) pandemic, work has been
same time.” ongoing on the various crude increments for
During the company’s Q2 earnings call in several years.
August, Nasser noted during an earnings call In 2019, Aramco brought the Harmaliyah
that Aramco had begun a two-year front-end increment project on stream, adding 25,000 bpd
engineering and design (FEED) stage of efforts to give a total of 100,000 bpd, while more than
to add to MSC, saying that most of the output 100 wells were drilled and completed on incre-
expansion would come from offshore fields. ment projects, nearly half of which were at Zuluf.
In a report to accompany its results, the com- Meanwhile, despite a significant reduction in
pany said it was in the final stages of detailed upstream spending when the company reduced
engineering for the Berri and Marjan crude its 2020 capital programme by around a third
increment projects to add 250,000 bpd and in response to the pandemic, a further 90 or so
300,000 bpd respectively. increment wells were drilled.™

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