Saudi Arabia Says Large Gas Reserves Found In Red Sea

Tiran (foreground) and Sanafir (background) islands in the Straits of Tiran between Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and Saudi Arabia as seen from an airplane. Credit: AFP


Saudi Arabia Says Large Gas Reserves Found In Red Sea

By Tsvetana Paraskova | OilPrice

Large volumes of natural gas have been found in the Red Sea, according to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) which quoted Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih as saying.

Saudi oil giant Aramco is considering opportunities for acquisitions of liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects in the United States, al-Falih has also said, according to a Reuters summary of SPA’s news item.

In January this year, Saudi Aramco’s chief executive Amin Nasser told Reuters in an interview that the oil firm was looking to spend billions of U.S. dollars on natural gas acquisitions in the United States as part of Aramco’s strategy to bolster its gas business and become a global natural gas player.

Last week, Nasser said at an industry event in London that Saudi Arabia aims to export as much as 3 billion cubic feet of gas per day by 2030 as part of its goal to boost the international footprint of its natural gas business.

Aramco will solely develop Saudi Arabia’s conventional and unconventional gas reserves, and the options for exports include exports via pipelines and LNG, according to Aramco’s top manager.

In November last year, Nasser said at an event in Dubai that Saudi Aramco, already a top global oil producer but not as strong in gas production, will boost efforts to grow its natural gas output, from both conventional and unconventional reserves.

Saudi Aramco’s gas development program is expected to attract as much as US$150 billion in investment over the next decade, Nasser said. Natural gas production is expected to jump to 23 billion standard cubic feet a day from the current 14 billion cubic feet a day, Aramco’s top executive said in Dubai a few months ago.

“We also have world-class unconventional gas resources that are rapidly supplementing our large conventional resources. Because a significant proportion of this unconventional gas is rich in both liquids and ethane, its production will play an important role in the further growth of the Kingdom’s chemicals sector,” Nasser said.

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