Khalid al-Falih, the head of the world's biggest oil producer, Saudi Aramco, has given a speech at Oxford University in which he mentioned that his company will invest $35 billion over the next five years to create new oil production opportunities and maintain an oil production capacity cushion which the world heavily relies upon.
He stated that "preserving our spare oil production capacity is crucial to maintaining oil market stability because it plays a pivotal role in protecting the world's economic health."
"So we are continuing to strengthen our oil business to meet the rising call on our oil production; in fact, we plan to invest $35 billion over the next five years in crude oil exploration and development alone to keep our oil production portfolio robust."
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Despite the weak demand in Europe, a result of the poor economic climate there, Saudi Aramco has been producing oil at record levels, nearly 10 million barrels a day; mostly due to the loss in oil production from Iran.
Large investments are needed to maintain or even increase this production capacity, to make up for the decline of older fields, if Saudi Arabia hopes to maintain its position as the world's only flexible producer over the next decade.
By. Joao Peixe of Oilprice.com
Joao is a writer for Oilprice.com More