Saudi Aramco’s upstream focus is increasingly turning to gas after earlier this year being directed by the Ministry of Energy to halt its crude oil production capacity expansion plans (MEES, 2 February). “Gas is going to take quite a bit of the upstream spending, because it’s an important growth area,” CEO Amin Nasser said last month, and the firm has revised up its gas expansion goals to a more than 60% increase on 2021 levels by 2030 (MEES, 15 March).
The firm is leaning on both conventional and unconventional gas reserves to yield the additional volumes, and has put together a strong development pipeline which should yield considerable gains in the coming years. Gas processing capacity exited last year at an all-time high of 19.1bn cfd according to Aramco’s latest annual report, and MEES estimates that this should increase by nearly 25% to around 23.6bn cfd by 2027 (see chart 1). (CONTINUED - 891 WORDS)
