20-01-09 Bahrain said it is planning to upgrade its export pipeline that links crude supplies from neighbouring GCC-state Saudi Arabia according to a senior Bahraini official.
Abdul Karim Al Sayed, chief executive of Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) said the new pipeline is expected to increase its transport from 230,000 bpd to 350,000 bpd by 2011 in line with future expansions of Bapco's refinery at Sitra.

Al Sayed said the expansion project is now under the front-end engineering and design (FEED) phase. The existing 114 pipeline will be replaced and extended with a preliminary cost estimated at $ 350 mm.
"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 was quoted as saying.

It is not clear if the new pipeline will be re-routed from its current route, which runs from Abqaiq to Dhahran in Saudi Arabia and then on to Bahrain or to a potential new route that will run directly from Abqaiq, and south of the existing pipeline in Bahrain.
Bahrain imports about 225,000 bpd of Arab Light crude oil from the offshore Abu Saafa field in the Kingdom, a joint Bahrain-Saudi Arabian crude oil production agreement.

The small Gulf state plans a $ 2 bn 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 said.