Saudi's Nuayyim field to start pumping by June

Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia's 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) Nuayyim oilfield would be ready to start production in mid-June, industry sources said yesterday. The field is one of three Saudi schemes due for completion by mid-2009 to boost the country's oil production capacity to 12.5 million bpd. Nuayyim's oil will be Arab Extra Light crude, which is prized by refiners for the ease with which it can be transformed into transport fuels. Most wells at Nuayyim were ready to pump and some were feeding crude into new infrastructure at the field, the sources said. Aramco would send first oil into a plant to separate oil and gas at Nuayyim in the next couple of days, one source said. It would take just over a month to fully test and start the separation plant, industry sources said. "By June 15 the plant would be ready to produce oil," said one. "The project is at the pre-commissioning stage... everything is running as scheduled." Aramco declined to comment on the start-up date. First production from the field was delayed from the initial schedule of December 2008, in part due to glitches in supplies of equipment for the separation plant. Construction of the plant began in September 2007. Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi said in March there were no customers for the oil that Nuayyim and another project at Shaybah oilfield would produce. He said then that both fields were ready to pump. Saudi Arabia has cut output by around two million bpd since last summer to match a slide in global oil demand due to recession, leaving it with growing spare capacity. Saudi output was just below eight million bpd, Naimi said. If all the new projects were ready in June, Saudi would have spare capacity of 4.5 million bpd, more than twice the 1.5 million to two million bpd cushion it keeps to meet any surprise global production outages. Keep up with the latest business news from the region with the Emirates Business 24|7 daily newsletter. To subscribe to the newsletter, please click here .