The Oil Drum

These underground storage plants are a Ministry of Defense project that are now operated under a joint agreement between MOD and Saudi Aramco.  These are not crude storage facilities, but hold refined diesel, gasoline and jet base fuels in many tanks, the larger ones approaching 1 km in length.  There are 5 at present.

I have a long term informal discovery project ongoing concerning S.A. crude storage tanks outside the Kingdom.  S.A. and Shell share 50% interest in Motiva Enterprises' refineries located in Port Arthur, Texas; Convent, Louisiana; and Norco, Louisiana.  Motiva refineries can process approximately 780,000 barrels per day, and have a distribution system including appx 47 product terminals with 19 MM BBLS of storage.  Since these are product terminals, fortunately I don't have to identify those.

Using a WAG of 20X refinery capacity, I can get around 50MM BBLS, not counting Rotterdam possibilities.

Ras Tanura Refinery  325,000 bpd
Aramco/Exxon Yanbu  400,000 bpd
Aramco/Shell Jubail 305,000 bpd
@ 20 x 20.6 MM BBLS

Norco, La  Crude: 240,000 BPD
Port Arthur, Tx. Crude: 235,000 BPD
Convent Ref, La. Crude: 255,000
@ 20 x capacity = 15 MMB

S.A. may be leasing tanks from Valero Corp http://www.valerolp.com/Customers/TerminalDataSheets/
At this Caribbean Island VLCC "service station" from Valero Corp.
http://www.valerolp.com/NR/rdonlyres/83C1FDE0-ABE8-4B18-B64E-F17DA79FE3A8/0/StEustatius1_25_06.pdf
with 51 tanks 11.3 MM BBLS of storage. (they can process only 15,000 BPD of light stuff)

Rotterdam?

S.A's. transportation subsidery can probably hold almost 10 MMB in their ships alone.

OFF TOPIC
13 March 2006
"Iran's Nuclear Plans Complicate China's Energy Security"
http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_report&report_id=456&language_id=1