World Business

KHURAIS OIL FIELD, Saudi Arabia —

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This massive oil field surrounded by the desolate sands of Saudi Arabia’s vast orient desert feels like the middle of nowhere.

But that which happens over the nearest year at Khurais, single of Saudi Arabia’s last undeveloped cyclops oil fields, could hold the key to what drivers will discharge one’s obligation to at the pump for years to come.

Under way at Khurais and two other smaller fields nearby is what Saudi Arabia calls the one only largest expansion of oil production capacity in history.

With consumers howling over record fuel prices and the United States pushing Saudi Arabia to produce greater quantity oil, this patch of small pebbles 100 miles west of the Saudi capital of Riyadh has become one of the most important places in the creation economy.

Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, Aramco, is spending $10 billion to build the infrastructure to pump 1.2 million barrels of oil by day by next June from the Khurais field and its two smaller neighbors. That alone would be greater amount of than the complete individual production of OPEC members Qatar, Indonesia and Ecuador.

The project forms the centerpiece of the Saudi plan to increase the total amount of oil it can produce to 12.5 million barrels on this account that day through the end of 2009 - up from a little more than 11 a thousand thousand barrels per lifetime now.

Consuming nations have pushed Saudi Arabia to boost production amplitude even further and also want the universe’s lop oil exporter to institute pumping more crude immediately to bring down record oil prices hovering near $140 a barrel. They say oil production has not kept up with increased demand, especially from China, India and the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia plans to produce 9.7 the great body of the people barrels of oil per day, or 11 percent of the world’s sum, in July. It is the but nation with significant excess capacity that it could put on the market quickly.

But the kingdom has resisted calls to grow production further, saying financial speculators and the falling dollar are to lay for high oil prices, not a shortage of supply.

These disagreements came to a head June 22 at a fine meeting of oil producing and consuming nations hosted by Saudi Arabia. In the end, Saudi Arabia said it could increase oil production extent of room to 15 million barrels per day grant that needed in future years. But it gave no indication that footprint, or an immediate increase in output, was necessary or planned.

The civil tussle over output masks the challenge Saudi Arabia faces in boosting production capacity by the agency of developing giant fields like Khurais.

“That is what people don’t perceive the worth of,” said Manouchehr Takin, an oil expert at the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies. “These are major projects, and people don’t realize they aren’t that at ease.”