Aramco: China overtakes US as largest customer
Saudi Gazette - 29 January, 2010
www.gulfinthemedia.com/index.php?id=505880&news_type=Economy&lang=en

Saudi Arabian Oil Co is exporting about 1 million barrels a day to China,
more than to the US, Chief Executive Officer Khalid Al-Falih said.

"We are already exporting more to China than to the US," he said here
Thursday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.

"We are prudent and careful about where to invest but our eyes are focused
on China and we will continue to look for all opportunities."

The US imported 1.014 million barrels of oil a day from Saudi Arabia in the
nine months through September, according to the Energy Information
Administration.

China and Saudi Arabia aim to boost trade 50 percent to $ 60 billion by
2015, the Saudi Press Agency reported this month, citing Chinese Trade
Minister Chen Deming.

Saudi Aramco has begun to expand and upgrade its oil and gas production and
refining businesses at a cost of $ 100 billion to tap rising demand in Asia,
Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi said in November.

Aramco is investing in refining capacity even given the current poor
returns, Al-Falih said earlier at a Davos panel. Refiners worldwide have
been forced to postpone expansion projects and idle plants in the past year
as the global recession eroded fuel demand, squeezing profit margins for oil
processors.

The Saudi company, which owns an interest in a refinery in China's Fujian
province, is in talks with China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. to take a stake
in a 200,000-barrel-a-day plant in Shandong. It is also expanding its Ras
Tanura refinery on Saudi Arabia's east coast and the Port Arthur plant in
Texas, Al-Falih said.

"Long term there will be a lot of consolidation and retirement of old and
inefficient refineries," he said in the interview. "We are building
refineries that are going to be the most efficient, well-configured and able
to deliver the products and we are comfortable that over their life cycle
they will be very profitable. We are not designing them for the markets of
2008, 2009 but we are putting them in place for the next three to four
decades."