Saudi certain new oil mega project will be on time

By Simon Webb and Barbara Lewis

KHURAIS OILFIELD, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - State oil giant Saudi Aramco is adamant the biggest new field in its plan to raise oil capacity will arrive bang on schedule in June next year.

A chorus of senior executives lined up on Monday to tell reporters visiting the Khurais project south of Riyadh the 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) expansion would avoid the delays that have plagued the global energy sector.

They were speaking a day after Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi assured an emergency meeting of consumers and producers the kingdom would pump enough oil to meet demand and pledged to add to existing plans to increase output potential.

"We are 100 percent confident that Khurais will come on stream as planned in June 2009," said Amin al-Nasser, one of Aramco's top executives.

He had been asked how he could be so certain the $10 billion (5 billion pounds) project would be on time given that another major boost to capacity from the Khursaniyah oil field has yet to start up after missing a December deadline.

Aramco officials had shown similar confidence about that plan last year. Nasser said on Monday that Khursaniyah would be ready to start in August.

"Even with a slight delay, it took 41 months from start to finish compared to the world average of 53 months, still Khursaniyah is doing very well," he said.

To prove the point rapid progress was being made at Khurais, Aramco took the visiting journalists on a tour of the miles of steel girders, storage tanks and pipelines, where some of the project's 28,000 workers toiled in the desert heat above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).