STATE oil firm Saudi Aramco’s crude output fell by 1 million barrels per day (mbpd) in 2009 from the previous year as the kingdom led Opec in making steep production curbs, data from Aramco shows.
Aramco’s crude output was 7.9 mbpd in 2009, the company says in an annual review, down from 8.9 mbpd in 2008. Opec pledged to cut output by 4.2 mbpd in late 2008 as global oil demand plummeted with slowing economic activity. Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia shouldered the biggest share of the cuts.
Aramco’s crude exports fell to 5.65 mbpd in 2009, from 6.88 mbpd in 2008.
Capacity and output from the Neutral Zone shared by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia is excluded from Aramco figures.
Aramco added more than 2 mbpd of production capacity in 2009, the company says. It completed an expansion programme that took Aramco’s capacity to 12 mbpd, boosting the kingdom’s total capacity to 12.5 mbpd.
The biggest increment was from the 1.2 mbpd Khurais oil field project, the biggest in Saudi history and the largest ever single addition to global oil supplies.
The expansion in capacity was completed as the economy slowed and the kingdom cut output, leaving Saudi Arabia sitting on around 4.5 mbpd of spare capacity, more than double the 1.5 mbpd to 2.0 mbpd cushion it aims to keep to meet any surprise outages in global supply. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that has significant spare capacity that can be brought into production swiftly if needed. The kingdom keeps the supply cushion as a matter of oil policy.
Aramco’s recoverable oil and condensate reserves edged up to 260.1 billion barrels from 259.9 billion barrels stated in last year’s review.
Gas reserves rose to 275.2 trillion cubic feet (tcf), Aramco says, up from 263 tcf last year. It discovered two new gas fields in 2009, one named Sanaman and the other Sirayyan.
The 12.2 tcf increase in reserves was much higher than the kingdom’s stated aim of finding 3 tcf to 7 tcf per year in additional reserves.
Despite the fall in Aramco’s crude production, gas output rose. The company pumped 8.6 bcf per day in 2009, up from 8.3 billion in 2008.
