INTERVIEW-Saudi Aramco confident of oil expansion goal

By Alex Lawler

LONDON, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Top world oil exporter Saudi Arabia is confident it will reach a target to lift crude oil output capacity, a top executive from the country's state oil firm said on Monday.

Saudi Arabia holds the world's largest oil reserves and is expanding supply capacity to meet rising world demand at a time when higher costs are leading to delays and cancellations across the oil and gas industry.

State oil firm Saudi Aramco aims to lift supply capacity to 12 million barrels per day, enough to meet 14 percent of current world demand, by the end of 2009, from about 11.3 million bpd at present.

"We're pressing ahead and we are very comfortable, we're very confident," Khalid al-Buainain, Senior Vice President Refining, Marketing and International, told Reuters on the sidelines of a London conference. "We will reach it."

Aramco is confident it will reach the goal despite one major project coming on stream later than expected.

The 500,000 barrel-per-day Khursaniyah oilfield should be pumping within two months, later than previously scheduled, al-Buainain said earlier on Monday in a speech at the London energy conference.

An official at Aramco had said in January the giant field, previously scheduled to begin pumping at the end of last year, would come onstream in the first quarter of this year.

Saudi Arabia pumps oil at agreed levels with fellow members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and is the only member able to boost supply significantly at short notice.