discovered fields; rather, it only means determining the resources available in the Kingdom for future use when needed and for the future generations." The minister said, "We discovered volumes of gas in the Red Sea area, in the north of the Kingdom and in the Rub' al Khali that can be commercially utilizable in addition to the discovery of types of heavy oil and non-traditional gas in various regions of the kingdom." He added that one of the future objectives is to develop all stages and sectors of the Saudi oil industry including turning Saudi Aramco into an integrated international company with regard to operations and activities in terms of type and location, and enabling it to compete with, and even be ahead of, the best international companies. He stated that due to technological development in the process of oil consumption and production, oil extraction rates from reservoirs rose from 30% to 50% in some countries in only 30 years and exceeded 70% in some fields, in addition to new discoveries that raised the global extractable reserves from 667 billion barrels in 1980 to 1.4 trillion barrels in 2010, despite an accumulated production of 760 billion barrels during the same period. Oil has also been extracted from reservoirs that were previously difficult to reach, he said.
