SAUDI Aramco will be looking to the sun as a future energy source to replace petroleum and natural gas for power generation and water desalination and to free up additional volumes of crude oil and gas for export and domestic feedstock, the company says in its Annual Review for 2009.

“In addition to abundant reserves of petroleum, Saudi Arabia is blessed with another source of energy: the sun,” it says in the report.

The kingdom experiences 3,000 hours of sunshine per year and features empty stretches of desert that can host solar arrays and vast deposits of clear sand that can be used in the manufacture of silicon photovoltaic cells, it says.

“Saudi Aramco is looking to the sun as an energy source to replace petroleum and gas for power generation and water desalination, thus freeing additional volumes of those commodities for export and domestic feedstock, and perhaps in the long run, solar power will become a source of electrical energy for the kingdom and for export,” Aramco says.

It adds that Saudi Aramco signed an agreement in June 2009 in Tokyo with Showa Shell Solar, an affiliate of its Showa Shell joint venture in Japan, that to investigate the 2010 construction of small-scale, pilot solar facilities that could generate 1-2 MW of power.