Bloomberg: Saudi Aramco Explores Red Sea for Gas With Magseis Seismic Study

Saudi Arabian Oil Co., the world’s largest crude exporter, is pressing ahead with a project to produce natural gas from the Red Sea by pursuing a geological survey of the area, according to Norway’s Magseis AS.

Magseis is conducting a seismic survey to produce three-dimensional images of “a small area” of the Red Sea floor and potential fuel deposits beneath it for Saudi Arabia’s state oil producer, Ivar Gimse, chief executive officer of the Norwegian company, said by telephone from Oslo on Feb. 6. A media official for Saudi Aramco, as the company is known, declined to comment on the project.

Saudi Arabia is seeking to boost gas output to supply power plants and petrochemical facilities. The company, which found gas deposits in the Red Sea in 2012, plans to more than double investment in unconventional sources of the fuel, which are harder to find and extract than more typical deposits, CEO Khalid Al-Falih said Jan. 28. MORE