The CEO of Saudi Aramco, Amin Al-Nasser, said the company has plans to increase gas production by between 50% to 60% by 2030, during a session at the 8th OPEC International Conference in Vienna today, Wednesday.
Saudi Arabia has one of the world's largest gas reserves, but it has not exploited these reserves in the past. However, demand for gas has recently picked up, especially after Russia invaded Ukraine, cutting off supplies to Europe in response to Western sanctions, contributing to increased demand for gas and strengthening gas production plans.
Much of Saudi Arabia's additional gas output will come from the Ghawar field, considered one of the world's largest undeveloped fields. Al-Nasser previously said Aramco aims to invest tens of billions of dollars in developing the field and has begun talks with investors in midstream and downstream projects such as pipeline networks.
The Ghawar field is the largest unconventional gas field in Saudi Arabia in terms of reservoir size and area, measuring 170 kilometers long and 100 kilometers wide. The field contains more than 200 trillion cubic feet of wet raw gas, which contains ethane, liquefied petroleum gas and condensates. Gas production from Ghawar is expected to start by the end of 2024 and reach 2 billion cubic feet per day of sales gas when the field is fully developed.
Al-Nasser mentioned today that oil demand will continue for years, saying demand from China has increased by 3 million barrels per day so far and demand from India has increased by 1 million barrels per day.
