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Saudi Aramco planning fleet renewal and growth by 2016

Saudi Aramco planning fleet renewal and growth by 2016
Saudi Aramco's offshore fleet is set to grow by 50 vessels to a total of 260 by 2016, as well as a fleet renewal strategy that will see most of its tonnage replaced with new, larger, more powerful vessels in the next few years.

Speaking at Middle East Workboat and Offshore Marine in Abu Dhabi this morning, Nabil Khalid Al Dabal, industrial services executive director at state oil company Saudi Aramco outlined the programme as well as a number of key projects in the Middle East region.
 
"Our expectation is that our support requirements will increase much more than in the past, so this is a message to our colleagues here is that we see many opportunities in the Gulf as a result of our projects."
 
Recent projects producing significant work for the offshore fleet in the Middle East include the automation of the world's largest offshore field, Safaniya, and continuing work on a number of large gas fields in the region.
 
"Our business plan for the next 5 years is just about $100bn, which is a significant investment for our company to spend  in the coming years." 
 
Much of that investment will be for projects that function as part of Aramco's accelerated transformation programme, which Al Dabal explained.
 
"The whole idea behind the programme is to transform Aramco, which is already the world's largest oil and gas company, into the largest integrated energy and petrochemical company in the industry."