Saudi Aramco to launch Muajjiz terminal in 2018: report

Saudi Aramco plans to launch its overhauled Muajjiz oil terminal on the Red Sea in 2018,  Reuters reported on Monday, citing Mohammed al-Qahtani, the oil giant’s senior vice president for upstream.

Bringing the terminal online would increase the kingdom’s total oil handling capacity to 15 million barrels per day (bpd) from 11.5 million bpd currently.

Muajjiz has been used to export Iraqi crude oil through the Iraqi Pipeline in Saudi Arabia (IPSA), but has not carried oil from Iraq since the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Saudi Arabia confiscated the pipeline in 2001 as compensation for debt owed by Iraq, and used it to transport gas to power plants in the west of the Kingdom for years before test opening it in 2012.

The IPSA will enable Saudi Arabia to export more of its crude should its regional rival Iran try to block the Strait of Hormuz.

According to data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Saudi Arabia has three primary oil export terminals; the port of Ras Tanura, which has an average capacity of around 3.4 million bpd and handles most of the Kingdom’s exports; Ras al-Ju'aymah, which can handle about 3 million bpd; and the Yanbu terminal on the Red Sea, which has a capacity of 1.3 million bpd.