Saudi Aramco has no plans currently to increase its oil production capacity to 15 million barrels per day (bpd), its chief executive said.

"Saudi Aramco has more spare capacity than the kingdom is obligated to or has committed to ... so it wouldn't make sense," Khalid Al-Falih told journalists in Riyadh when asked if the state-run energy company was considering expanding its upstream oil capacity from around 12 million bpd.

"If we ever need to bring projects to maintain capacity or to increase capacity our planning horizon is much shorter than other peers in the industry," he said. "In the short to medium term, our focus is on gas."     

Al-Falih said Aramco has shown it can bring projects online in three to four years. He said Aramco had a number of projects with front-end engineering work already done that could be brought online to offset declines from existing fields or increase capacity, if needed.

He said the 900,000 bpd Manifa oilfield, which is expected to reach full capacity by 2014, could be expanded to 1.2 million bpd, for example.

"It can, but we haven't made a decision," he said. "Until Manifa produces for a while we're not going to even consider expansion." - Reuters