State oil giant Saudi Aramco expects to have 900 billion barrels of oil resources by 2025, up from the current 790 billion barrels, a company executive said on Tuesday.
Current recoverable crude oil and condensate reserves stand at around 260.2 billion barrels, according to Reuters.
"Demand for hydrocarbons will rise despite things happening with oil prices," Jamal AlKhonaifer, development director at Saudi Aramco, told an industry conference in Moscow.
He said 395 billion barrels within the 790 billion barrels figure are probable and possible contingent resources.
"Aramco produces almost 9.5 million barrels a day, and if it needs to replace these reserves it needs to add almost 35 billion barrels of new reserves every 10 years. That's a very large challenge," said Sadad al-Husseini, a former top executive at Saudi Aramco.
Aramco's CEO Khalid al-Falih said in January the company is "targeting to increase average recovery rates from our oil reservoirs by 20 percent which could add 160 billion barrels of additional reserves. That's more than the current reserves of the United States, Russia, China, the UK and Brazil combined."
On Tuesday, Khonaifer also said the company is currently pumping 9.7 million to 9.8 million barrels per day (bpd) and plans for next year's oil production depends on demand. "We do not care about the oil prices, we don't play with them. We even don't have our own benchmark. Of course we are not interested in too high and too low prices," he said, adding that the OPEC heavyweight can easily adjust its production according to demand given its significant spare capacity. Saudi Arabia has an output capacity of 12.5 million bpd.
