Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat- Saudi Aramco the world’s largest oil corporation has discovered a new gas field in the Saudi territorial waters in the Arab Gulf, this was announced by minister of petroleum and mineral resources Ali Al-Naimi.

In a statement to the Saudi Press Agency.

According to al-Naimi, on April 15, 2006, gas poured out of Karan well, about 160 kilometer north of Dhahran with an average of 40 million cubic feet per day of gas.

The productive capacity of the well is expected to jump to 80 million cubic feet per day.Saudi Aramco exported its first crude oil in 1939, shortly after the kingdom of Saudi Arabia was unified, according to a company statement. The company controls more than 25 percent of the global oil reserves, making it the world’s largest oil company. According to the latest statistics available, the company produced 8.6 million barrels of oil per day in 2004, with a total for the year of 3.15 billion barrels. Saudi Aramco also produced 387.3 million barrels of natural gas in 2004, the company said.

In other energy developments Saudi Arabia said on Sunday it would set up two petrochemical complexes worth 23 billion riyals ($6.1 billion) in the industrial hubs of Jubail and Yanbu.

An equity stake in both projects will be floated on the Saudi bourse, the oil ministry said in a statement. The Jubail complex will be set up by four firms from Europe, Japan, the United States and Saudi Arabia, the statement said.

“The (Jubail) complex will include … several plants and new petrochemical products … used to make several finished products,” it said. The statement did not give any details about the partners and did not say if the Yanbu complex would have foreign investors. A source from Saudi petrochemical giant Saudi Basic Industries Corp. told the Reuters news agency: “We have not heard of the two projects”. The two plants will get their feedstock of ethane, propane, butane and natural gas from the ministry.