Royal/Dutch Shell and its joint venture partners in Saudi Arabia hope to start drilling for non-associated gas in their Rub Al-Khali concession area in May this year after acquiring a rig, a company source said.

"We have the rig and we plan to start drilling in May, which is good news because we had originally thought we could not start until October or November," said the source.
A consortium of Shell, French Total and Saudi Aramco was awarded the $2.5 billion gas development project in the southern sector of Saudi Arabia's Rub Al Khali or Empty Quarter in November 2003.
The South Rub Al Khali Co Ltd (SRAK) was formed by the joint venture partners. Shell holds 40 per cent in the joint venture with Total and Saudi Aramco having a 30 per cent share each.
The contract was the only one salvaged out of the original Saudi Gas Initiative, a project designed to allow foreign oil companies to enter the upstream energy sector of the world's biggest oil producing country for the first time in over three decades.
The source said the consortium had conducted an extensive "high resolution aerial magnetic survey," over an area.
The consortium used the regional knowledge of Shell in Oman and Total in Yemen as well as the local expertise of Saudi Aramco in making its decision.
"The primary objective of SRAK will be the pre-Khuff Palaeozoic Unayzah formation, which lies at a depth of some 12,000 ft, and the deeper Sarah and Saq sandstone formations," Patrick Allman-Ward, SRAK's chief executive officer, said in an interview with Shell in the Middle East magazine.
Under the agreement signed between the Saudi government and the joint venture company, SRAK is allowed to explore, develop and produce non-associated gas and condensate and natural gas liquids in Blocks 5-9 and 82-85 in the concession area.
If oil is discovered, the rights to develop and produce it remain with the Saudi government.
Saudi Arabia in 1998 invited multinational oil companies into its upstream industry to develop non-associated gas deposits that make up 40 per cent of Saudi Arabia's 231 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas reserves.
Saudi Arabia said that Saudi Aramco had discovered natural gas in the Shaybah oilfield in eastern Saudi Arabia, a find that was significant for the consortium.
Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali Naimi said at the time that the discovery was made with a well that flowed an average 20,000 mcf per day of gas and 650 bpd of condensate.
The importance of the find was in its being in new zones, where non-associated gas had not been discovered before, Naimi said.
The discovery came just two weeks after Saudi Arabia signed four separate upstream gas agreements with Russia's LUKoil, China's Sinopec and a partnership of Italy's Eni and Spain's Repsol YPF for blocks in the northern sector of the Empty Quarter, where Shaybah is located.
Saudi Arabia is producing seven bcf per day of gas but expects demand to rise to around 12 bcfd.A Sino-Saudi team visited a remote corner of the Rub' Al-Khali recently to watch its latest shared efforts and resources in action.
The management of Sinopec International Petroleum Exploration and Production Corp (SIPC) and Saudi Aramco, shareholders of the upstream joint venture company, Sino Saudi Gas Limited (SSGL), visited the Sheeh-2 well site, the first of 27 wildcat wells planned to be drilled by early 2009 by four upstream joint ventures.
SSGL is the concessionaire for Block B, which covers 39,000 sq km.
SSGL is committed to drilling seven wildcat wells in the Rub Al-Khali basin under the Kingdom's upstream Gas Offering completed in 2004.
The Sheeh-2 wildcat location was determined after acquiring almost 7,000 km of 2D seismic data. SSGL has committed to acquire a minimum of 13,000 km of 2D seismic data in its block.
Representing SIPC was president Zhou Baixiu and vice president Zhou Yuqi. Also in attendance was the management team of SSGL, led by CEO Wang Shicheng.
Representing Saudi Aramco was Abdullah S Al-Saif, senior vice president of Exploration and Producing; Abdulla A Al-Naim, executive director of Exploration and an SSGL board member and Ibraheem M Assa'adan, manager of Upstream Ventures Department, which oversees all four upstream joint ventures for Aramco.