Saudi Aramco, the state oil company, is in investment talks with Indian companies, a senior executive said on Wednesday.
“Hopefully we will see some announcements soon on investment in Indian companies,” Faisal Faqeer, senior vice-president, liquids to chemicals development, downstream, at Saudi Aramco, said delegates at the India Energy Week in Goa, without revealing the company’s plans.
The world’s top crude oil exporter and OPEC kingpin has increased its investments in refining and petrochemicals across Asia to ensure new markets for its crude, seeing chemical growth as critical to its downstream expansion strategy.
In 2018, Saudi Aramco and the Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) formed a consortium with Indian state-run enterprises to build a 1.2 million barrels-per-day (bpd) coastal refinery and petrochemical plant in western Maharashtra, however the project has faced land acquisition issues.
Saudi Arabia is producing around 9 million bpd, significantly below its existing capacity of 12 million bpd, after cutting output as part of an agreement with OPEC and its allies last year.
Last year, Reuters reported that India, the world’s third largest oil importer and user, wants Saudi Arabia’s Aramco to participate in its proposed strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) initiative in order to deepen ties with its important supplier.
Prior to this, Saudi Arabia instructed energy giant Aramco to keep its oil production capacity at 12 million barrels per day, cancelling a planned increase, according to the corporation.
“Aramco announces that it has received a directive from the ministry of energy to maintain its maximum sustainable capacity (MSC) at 12 million barrels per day” rather than increasing it to 13 million barrels per day, the company said in a statement.
In a July interview, Aramco CEO Amin Nasser stated that the government made the decision to increase the maximum sustained capacity and production target under the concession agreement.
“This is always in the hands of the administration. The government can tell you to increase or anything through the Ministry of Energy, he said. “They will decide the maximum sustained capacity and they will decide the production target.”
He stated that work on the offshore Marjan, Berri, and Zuluf fields was already started.
During an earnings call last March, Nasser told analysts that Marjan would add 300,000 b/d of capacity and Berri 250,000 b/d by 2025, while a projected 600,000 b/d increase at Zuluf was in the “engineering phase,” with the project expected to come online in 2026.
