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Saudi Arabia's oil use rises as demand picks up

JEDDAH - Saudi Arabia's domestic crude oil consumption increased 11 percent in May from a year earlier, figures posted on the Joint Organization Data Initiative (JODI) website showed Monday.

The data revealed that the Kingdom consumed an average 1.98 million barrels a day of oil this year, compared with 1.78 million barrels a year ago.

Domestic use fell by less than 1 percent in May from 1.99 million barrels in April as the PetroRabigh refinery was shut for maintenance, according to the website.

Domestic demand is rising as the nation's population grew 3.2 percent annually from 2004 to 2010.

Consumption reached a record in February when the country used 2 million barrels a day before two of its refineries, the PetroRabigh and Yanbu plants, were shut for maintenance. This is the highest level since at least January 2002, the year when Saudi Arabia started submitting oil data to JODI.

Saudi Arabia has a capacity to refine 2.12 million barrels a day of crude, according to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

The initiative is supervised by the Riyadh-based International Energy Forum and shows data supplied directly by governments.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's crude oil exports rose to at least 7.7 million barrels per day (bpd) when output hit record highs in June, an industry source said Tuesday.

A senior Opec Gulf delegate told Reuters last week the Kingdom pumped more than 9.8 million bpd and boosted exports in June, although he did not give export levels.

The industry source said he estimated Saudi oil exports were between 7.7 and 7.9 million bpd in June. The rest of Saudi crude output goes into its own stocks, refineries and power stations.

A second industry source said that Saudi crude sales were around 7.5 million bpd in June, including around 1 million bpd in sales to Saudi Aramco's joint-venture refineries inside the kingdom and around 4 million bpd sold to China. - SG/AgenciesExports to North America amounted to around 800,000 bpd in June, while sales to European buyers were around 700,000 bpd, he said.

JODI data showed this week that Saudi Arabia exported 6.83 million bpd of the nearly the nearly 9 million bpd of crude it produced in May.

Saudi crude oil stocks stood at 66.55 million barrels at the end of May, almost double the May 2010 level, after an average of 350,000 bpd of crude were pumped into storage in May this year, JODI data showed.

The large Rabigh refinery, which can consume up to 400,000 bpd of oil, was shut for maintenance in May. The second industry source said he expected Saudi crude production in July to fall below that of June to around 9.4-9.5 million bpd. But he said output in August could be higher t because of strong demand.

© The Saudi Gazette 2011