Aramco sees China demand growing, eyes more investments
By Maha El Dahan and Yousef Saba
DUBAI (Reuters) -Saudi Aramco (TADAWUL:2222) Chief Executive Amin Nasser said on Sunday the oil giant was looking at further opportunities to invest in China, where he said oil demand was robust and growing.
State-owned Aramco has been ramping up its China presence in a string of deals in refining and petrochemicals, some of them with crude offtake agreements attached.
«So far we are in the early part of 2024, demand is healthy and growing in China,» Nasser said on a media call following the release of results that showed net profit falling 24.7% to $121.3 billion on lower oil prices.
Nasser said the country's refineries were some of the most fully integrated and had the highest conversion rates and Aramco was currently looking at further opportunities for investment.
Nasser expected the global oil market to remain healthy throughout 2024.
«We expect it to be fairly robust, we are looking at growth of about 1.5 million barrels,» Nasser said.
Nasser put demand for 2024 at 104 million barrels a day as opposed to an average of 102.4 million barrels in 2023.
The Saudi government in late January ordered Aramco to scrap its expansion plan to boost production capacity to 13 million barrels a day (mbpd), returning to the previous 12 mbpd target.
Two projects that were part of the expansion plan — Safaniyah and Manifa — are on hold, while three others are ongoing. Those are Zuluf, Marjan and Berri, expected to add 600,000, 300,000 and 250,000 barrels a day of crude production.
Nasser said maximum production capacity would be optimized to maintain it within the 12 million bpd target, despite the ongoing projects.
«I will manage that by moderating our decline, and offsetting that decline with
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