Bahrain, Saudi to build $350mn oil pipeline

DEEP CONNECT: Bahrain currently imports around 230,000 bpd of oil from Saudi Arabia. (Getty Images)

Bahrain and Saudi Arabia plan to replace and expand an oil pipeline connecting the two countries by 2011, with costs expected to reach $350 million, a senior Bahraini official said on Monday.

Abdulkarim al-Sayed, chief executive of Bahrain Petroleum Co (Bapco), said the engineering design for the pipeline would be completed by the end of this year, and construction completed in 2011.

Cost estimates of $350 million for the 114 kilometre-long pipeline were preliminary, Sayed said at an energy conference in Manama.

"It's not final...it's an order of magnitude, of course the engineering design that we're doing between now and the end of the year will determine the price", he told reporters.

Bahrain currently imports some 230,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil from Saudi Arabia. The new pipeline will have a capacity of 350,000 bpd.

Bahrain plans a $2 billion expansion of its Sitra refinery, to boost capacity to about 360,000 bpd beyond 2016 from 260,000 bpd now. The expansion depends on getting increased supplies from Saudi Arabia.

"Most probably the pipeline will be there before the refinery capacity," Sayed said. "We have future plans for (added) refinery capacity," Sayed without elaborating. (Reuters)

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