Merrill Lynch analysis of Saudi gas production targets and power generation fuel mix

residual fuel oil burned. Saudi Arabia has the world’s 4" largest gas reserves, yet reaching the 5.8 bcf/d production growth target by 2020 is not that straight forward. ..though boosting gas production to the NTP target poses significant challenges The new Wasit project, which is due to come online in 2016 and ramp up to 2.5 bcf/d by 2020, meets about 40% of the gas production growth target. Other than that, Saudi Arabia is focusing on getting unconventional production off the ground to meet the remaining 3.3 bcf/d of the production growth target. The timing, cost and commercial feasibly of which this unconventional gas is highly uncertain. The 2.5 bcf/d from the Wasit project is about the amount of gas that would be needed to meet incremental power demand and displace 300 thousand bpd of crude burn, assuming gas demand does not grow in other sectors, which is unlikely. Hence, it is likely that Saudi’s ability to switch significantly to reduce oil burn in power generation to 2020 will be quite limited, explaining the new openness to consider gas imports, in our view. Chart 42: Oil burned for power generation could drop by 30% or 300 Chart 43: Other sectors like petrochemicals and industry will see their thousand bpd by 2020, most of which would likely be crude gas demand grow as well 1,200 >, td Saudi oil demand in power generation Saudi natural gas consumption, 2013 1,000 m crude burn = resid industry, 2.6 oil & gas befid 800 extraction, 0.3 beifd petchems, 0.5 600 befld 400 200 power 0 generation, 4.4 o ft 2 OO Fe D DBO THT NM TFT YO bef/d sSsS SSBB SS SES SSES N N N N N N N N N N N N N Source: IEA, BofA Merrill Lynch Commodities Research Source: IEA, BofA Merrill Lynch Commodities Research Equity Strategy: more clarity required, but investible themes emerging Hootan Yazhari, CFA >> Merrill Lynch (DIFC) [email protected] More clarity required, but high level benefits becoming evident The recent National Transformation Program (NTP) document provided a much awaited articulated roadmap through 2020 of how the government is seeking to achieve its highly ambitious Vision. However, we believe significantly more detail is still required before the market can make more concrete conclusions on the key winners and losers from the program as well as quantify the impact it could have on corporate earnings (both positive and negative). Whilst at this juncture it is difficult to quantify the size of the NTP opportunity for individual companies, we feel more confident in highlighting the sectors that we see could benefit from Saudi Arabia ambitious plans. We have detailed the sectors that we see as likely benefiting most in the table below. We also highlight the sectors which could face the most negative impact from the roll out of the NTP. OS erartll Lynch GEMs Paper #26 | 30 June 2016 39 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016149