The Saudi hydrocarbons industry may remain firmly closed to the private sector, but this has proved no barrier to the creation of private oil companies owned by Saudi citizens. Forced by circumstance to seek out investment opportunities abroad, several such Saudi oil ventures are now beginning to acquire significant interests around the world.

A flurry of announcements since May has included upstream ventures from Kazakhstan to Venezuela and a downstream deal in Morocco. Saudi firms have also emerged as junior partners in both of the consortia that are hoping to lay a pipeline across Afghanistan to carry gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan.

Although Saudi Arabia's growing number of independent oil companies are denied the opportunity to invest at home, they have been able to draw on a large pool of local talent. Several senior executives learnt their trade in the national oil industry. They include Abdullah Basodan, a former employee of Saudi Aramco, who is now chief executive of Nimir Petroleum Company, and Ghazi Habib, the president of Corral Petroleum Holdings, who was on the staff of the products marketeer Saudi Marketing & Refining Company (Samarec), since merged into Aramco.

The largest of the local oil companies is Jeddah-based Nimir, which was set up in 1991. It emerged onto the international scene with the acquisition of Yemen's Shabwa block 4 the following year and has since acquired another three blocks in the area. However, Nimir is making its biggest impact much further afield.

In late 1995, Nimir bought the Colombia operations of two subsidiaries of Shell Petroleum Company, Hocal and Homcol. Its share of production from fields in the Magdalena Valley and Central Llanos regions is now some 22,000 barrels a day (b/d).

Off Russia's Pacific coast, Nimir operates the Okruzhonoye field on Sakhalin island, which came on stream in early 1994 and now produces some 10,000 b/d. It also has a 5,000-b/d topping crude unit on the island that meets a quarter of local demand. Joint explorations with Shell in Romania and Malta have been terminated.

More recently, Nimir has signed an exploration deal for an area of 15,000 kilometres in northeast Oman, under the terms of which it will invest $50.5 million over eight years. Other agreements announced in the last two months are:

an exploration and production-sharing agreement for an offshore oil field shared by Libya and Tunisia. A consortium of Nimir and Malaysia's state-owned Petronas has made a commitment to spend $30 million over a five-year period in the 3,000-square-kilometre 7th November block. The concession ratified on 5 May was granted by Libyan/Tunisian Joint Oil, which says the block has a minimum of 260 million-300 million barrels of recoverable reserves in its main structure. The consortium's initial spending commitment is comfortably within the $40 million limit beyond which the US will impose sanctions on investors in Libya. However, any subsequent development of the field could lead to pressure on the consortium from Washington.

a 25-year production and development contract for the North Buzachi field in Kazakhstan. Nimir will spend $30 million in the first three years with an option to invest a further $73.5 million in the subsequent two years. Royalties and other taxes will be paid to the Kazakhstan government. Nimir says the field has 1,500 million barrels in place and estimated recoverable reserves of 500 million barrels at 20 degrees API.

a 20 per cent share in a consortium led by the US' Pennzoil Exploration & Production Company that will operate a Lake Maracaibo oil field in Venezuela. Pennzoil has said the group, which bid $46 million for the contract, expects to invest at least $100 million to lift production to 30,000 b/d from a

current 2,400 b/d. Reserves are estimated at 111 million barrels.

Nimir has also teamed up with another private Saudi firm, Delta, to take a small stake in a consortium led by the US' Amoco Corporation that will develop enormous oil reserves in the Caspian Sea. Delta was recently prompted to announce that it had no intention of expanding its Caspian involvement for the time being and would not be joining any other consortia to acquire oil assets in Azerbaijan.

Delta's other interests include a joint venture with the US' Unocal Corporation that plans to build a pipeline to carry Turkmen gas to Pakistan via Afghanistan. However, the project has yet to get off the ground due to worries about political stability in Afghanistan; it has also been delayed by a legal dispute over rights to the project between rival bidder Bridas of Argentina and both Unocal and the Turkmen government. The consortium led by Bridas is understood to include a little-known Saudi company, Ningharco.

Another company expanding rapidly is Jeddah-based Corral Petroleum Holdings, owned by local businessman Mohammed Hussein al-Amoudi. On 6 May, it was announced that Corral had purchased majority stakes in Moroccan oil refiners Societe Marocaine de l'Industrie du Raffinage (Samir) and Societe Cherifienne des Petroles (SCP) in a deal worth $421 million.

The deal also commits Corral to investing a further $409 million in the Moroccan downstream sector over the next five years, adding to its portfolio of existing investments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

In 1994, Corral paid $738 million for Sweden's largest integrated petroleum group, OK Petroleum - later renamed Preem Petroleum - which produces oil in Europe and Angola for two refineries in Sweden serving its network of 500 petrol stations. Corral's other investments include majority stakes in service station owners Naft Services Company of Saudi Arabia and Fortuna Holding Company of Lebanon.