Saudi-Arabien Wirtschaftshandbuch Saudi Arabia Business ... - Ghorfa

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The hydrocarbon sector (oil and gas) is of primary importance
for the Saudi economy. Around 34% of the gross
domestic product, almost 90% of the exports and 82% of
the state income are generated by this sector. On the other
hand, this one-sided dependence of the economy on oil
and gas harbours certain risks as shown in the past when
the oil price dropped dramatically. For this reason, the
Saudi government is concentrating on a course which is
set to diversify the economic structure and export base.
The recent development of energy-intensive industrial
branches e.g. petrochemicals, have proven to be highly
successful.
With production capacities of 11 million barrels every
day, Saudi Arabia produced 9.21 million barrels a day
in 2006 compared to 9.35 million barrels a day in 2005.
By the end of 2003, 91 oil fields had been developed including
the world’s largest on-shore field in Ghawar and
the offshore field Safanyiah. The extensive oil reserves,
the favourable prospects for developing further oil fields
and the favourable production costs are a guarantee that
Saudi Arabia will remain the leader of the growing world
oil production in the long-term.
The oil output was increased from 2,589 million barrels
in 2002 to 3,361 million barrels in 2006, which equates
to an annual average rise of around 7%. However the
Kingdom has had unused production capacities for years.
At a daily production of 9.0 million barrels (November
2007) there is a surplus production capacity of 2.0 million
barrels a day. Due to the expected rise in the demand
for oil on the world market, Saudi Arabia has recently
been attempting to explore and/or develop new oil fields.
As a consequence, the new oil fields Qatif and Abu Safa
went operational at the end of 2004. The current plans
stipulate that the production capacity will be raised to
12.5 million barrels a day by 2009. The International
Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that Saudi Arabia will
increase its current 12% share of the world oil production
to 18% over the next 20 years. At the same time, the daily
production capacity will be more than doubled to 22.5
million barrels a day.
The natural gas reserves in Saudi Arabia were estimated
at 253 billion cubic feet (cft) in 2006, which corresponds
to around 4% of the world gas reserves. These gas reserves
put the Kingdom in fourth place behind Russia, Iran
and Qatar in the world. Two thirds of these gas reserves
comprise associated gas (gas bound inside the crude oil).
According to information provided by the Saudi ARA-
MCO, around 15% of the reserves have been tapped into
already which means that there is great potential for the
production of natural gas in the future. At the moment,
Saudi Arabia produces around 2.5% of the world’s gas
production, which is low compared to the leading producing
countries: Russia (22%), USA (18%) and Canada
(6%). On a global scale, Saudi Arabia still lies behind
Iran (4%) and Great Britain (3%).
At the start, only associated gas from the crude oil output
was produced. In 1975 the Master-Gas-System was
established during an extensive investment program; its
first phase went into operation in 1982. The Master-
Gas-System collects the gas, separated from the crude oil
if necessary, split into its separate components of ethane,
propane, butane and methane, and distributed via a complex
pipeline network that was completed at the end of
the 1980s. The plan is to gradually replace the domestic
oil consumption with gas to free up more oil capacities
for export purposes. The natural gas capacities have been
steadily expanded since 2000. The production today has
reached a volume of 7 billion cubic feet/day (cft/d) although
there are plans to increase this to 15 billion cubic
feet/day in 2010.
In September 1998, the Saudi Gas Initiative (SGI) was
started; this allowed the international oil companies access
to the gas output and in return these companies were
to invest in the fields of petrochemicals, energy and water.
However the parties could not agree to the contractual
conditions and therefore the Saudi government declared
the SGI negotiations to be temporarily terminated in
June 2003. However by the end of 2003, an initial contract
was agreed with a consortium comprising the Saudi
ARAMCO and the international oil companies Royal
Dutch/Shell and Total, for the development, production
and use of natural gas. In spring 2004, further contracts
were concluded with the Russian company Lukoil, the
Chinese company Sinopec, the Italian company ENI and
the Spanish company Repsol, thereby finally opening
up the gas sector to private foreign investors. There is no
German participation as yet. By 2010 the gas initiative
plans stipulate that 25 billion US$ will be invested in the
exploration, the production and the processing.
In recent years, Saudi Arabia has continuously increased
its refinery capacities. The refineries increase the production
from 583 million barrels (2002) to 715 million barrels
(2006). Since 1992, seven refineries have been operated,
five of which belong to ARAMCO and the other
two are joint-ventures between ARAMCO and the foreign
companies Mobil and Shell. The ARAMCO makes
extensive investments to increase the refinery capacities
and to improve the technological level of the refineries