Saudi Aramco to Expand Shaybah, Khurais Fields Oil Output

The world's largest oil exporter, Saudi Aramco, will increase the output of light sour crude from two fields - Shaybah and Khurais - by 550,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2016-2017, Chief Executive Khalid al-Falih said.

"This will basically allow us to relax production from the more matured fields and reservoirs and extend them and also to rebalance our crude slate," the head of Saudi Arabia's national oil company told reporters on the sidelines of the World Energy Congress.

"With Manifa, we're tilting towards more heavy (crude)," he said, referring to the giant oilfield which started production earlier this year. "Shaybah will come first ... it will come up by end of 2016 and early 2017," al-Falih said. "This will bring it up to a million barrels (per day). We're in the process of awarding the contract in the next few days." He added that Khurais was in the front-end engineering stage and the expansion should be completed by 2017.