Kingdom’s oil exports hit 7.835m bpd in January

JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia’s crude oil exports in January rose to their highest level in nine months to 7.835 million barrels per day from 7.486 million bpd in December, official data showed.
Saudi Arabia produced 10.230 million bpd in January, a record high, compared with 10.144 million bpd a month earlier, the data showed.
Monthly export figures are provided by Riyadh and other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to the Joint Organizations Data Initiative, which publishes them on its website.
Saudi Arabia’s domestic crude oil inventories fell to 314.119 million barrels in January from 325.474 million barrels a month earlier.
Domestic refineries processed 2.468 million bpd of crude, compared with 2.312 million bpd in December, while exports of refined oil products fell to 1.343 million bpd in January from 1.441 million bpd the month before.
In January crude oil burnt to generate power fell to 293,000 bpd from 392,000 bpd in December, the JODI data showed.
In another development, sources familiar with the matter said Saudi Aramco has launched a tender to build gas treatment units at Uthmaniyah — a project expected to cost upwards of $500 million.
The aim of the project is to recover ethane but also propane and other natural gas liquids (NGL) from 1.4 billion standard cubic feet per day (scfd) of sales gas.
Bidding is due to close by the end of May, one of the sources said.
The ethane recovery project will strip the residual ethane from the processed fuel gas stream and make it available as a high-value feedstock for the petrochemical industry instead of burning it with the fuel gas, said Sadad Al-Husseini, a former senior executive at Saudi Aramco.
The project would be completed in August 2019, two sources said.
The sources said the project was estimated to cost anywhere between $500 million to as much as $1 billion.
Saudi Aramco does not comment on rumor or speculation, it said in an e-mailed response to Reuters.
Uthmaniyah is one of the operating areas of Ghawar, the world’s largest onshore oilfield. The gas plant has a processing capacity of 2.5 billion scfd.
The oil giant is building a number of gas plants to meet rising domestic gas demand.
It has said its Fadhili, Midyan, and Wasit gas plants will add more than 5 billion scfd of non-associated gas processing capacity.