Abdallah S. Jum'ah, CEO and president for Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Saudi Aramco) on Tuesday said in Beijing that the Saudi Arabian state-owned oil producer intended to export more petroleum to China, so as to further strengthen their energy cooperation. Co-founded by Saudi Aramco, the China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec Group), and Exxon Mobil Corp., a refining-petrochemical integration project is scheduled to start operation in the first quarter of 2009 in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian, and then the daily Saudi Arabia-to-China crude oil import volume will add up to 1 million barrels from 750,000 barrels. Presently, Saudi Aramco is negotiating with Sinopec Group, one of China's three energy titans, about participating in the latter's big oil refining project lying in Qingdao, East China. This engineering, came into practice in June 2008, is designed to process 10 million tons of crude oil from Saudi Arabia per year. In addition, these two companies are jointly prospecting for natural gas in Saudi Arabia, added Jum'ah.
