Farther, deeper, colder is now the mantra as crude producers scour the globe

But new finds require costly technologies – ones that only a high oil price can sustain

OTTAWA — If Saudi Aramco’s $7-billion (U.S.) Khursaniyah oil project had come on stream at the end of 2007 as scheduled, the world economy might not be staggering under $135 crude prices.

The planned 500,000 barrels a day of Khursaniyah production would have been like a cool drink of water for an oil market thirsting for additional supply.


Instead, the project was stalled by delays in the construction of a processing plant needed to treat the natural gas liquids that Khursaniyah would produce along with the light, relatively sweet crude oil.

Not far from Khursaniyah, in the eastern part of the kingdom, the state-owned oil monopoly, Saudi Aramco, is spending $17-billion to develop the vast Khurais field.

That project aims to add one million barrels a day of crude oil by the end of 2009, but analysts question whether the complicated project – which requires tremendous amounts of sea water to be injected into the reservoir to produce the oil – will meet a demanding construction deadline.

Even in Saudi Arabia, where oil is more plentiful than water, getting the next barrels out of the ground is becoming an increasingly expensive and complex undertaking.

Globe and Mail