Saudi Aramco produced a record amount of gas last year, according to the company’s 2014 annual report.

Aramco sent an average of 11.3 billion cubic feet a day (cf/d) of gas to processing facilities, up from 11 billion cf/d in 2013. All the gas was used domestically, underlining the huge demand for the resource in the kingdom.

Supplies of ethane, a gas used extensively in the petrochemicals sector, remained at the 2013 level of 1.4 trillion BTUs a day.

Gas production looks set to increase during 2015, with the Wasit gas development due to commence commissioning by the end of the year after a lengthy construction phase. The project was 91 per cent completed at the end of 2014 and will add 2.5 million cf/d of gas to the kingdom’s capacity when fully operational.

The Aramco report also stated that construction production facilities at the Midyan gas field were 8 per cent complete at the end of 2014, and will be fully operational by the fourth quarter of 2016, delivering 75 million cf/d to a power plant at Duba on the Red Sea coast.

Gas remains the major priority for Aramco and the company is still heavily committed to increasing further the capacity of both production and processing facilities. This means that investment in several schemes remains in place despite the state-owned oil major trimming costs elsewhere.

The $6.5bn Fadhili gas plant is out to tender, as is a small unconventional gas project in the north of the kingdom. Fadhili will add a further 2.5 billion cf/d of processing capacity when completed in early 2019.

“Together, our Wasit, Midyan and Fadhili gas plants will add more than 5 billion cf/d of non-associated gas processing capacity, further enabling opportunities in Saudi industries such as steel, aluminium and petrochemicals,” said the report.