Saudi Aramco to invest over US$100 bln in downstream investments over next decade

19-May-14

Saudi Aramco announced that its downstream investments would exceed US$100 billion over the next decade, as global demand for oil rises by a quarter in the next 25 years, as per Reuters. "Globally, these investments will exceed $100 billion over the next decade alone and that is premised on our belief in the long term sustainability of oil demand," Khalid al-Falih, the company's chief executive said, "As a result of both global demographic growth and rising standards of living in the developing world we see global demand for oil growing by a quarter over the next 25 years. Aramco's refining capacity would be between 8 million to 10 million barrels a day (bpd) in the coming years, a figure exceeding the goal cited by Aramco in 2012 of 8 million bpd. The increased demand will primarily com from high demand growth markets of the Far East and from the Middle East. Aramco is also looking to grow within the petrochemicals sector with two major projects. Aramco has a joint venture with Dow Chemical Co to build the $20 billion Sadara petrochemical complex in Jubail that is due to come on stream in H2-2015 is also expanding its petrochemical complex called PetroRabigh that it jointly owns with Sumitomo Chemical. This will take total chemicals participate production capacity to over 15 mln tpa.