DUBAI: The world's top oil exporter Saudi Arabia is on track to complete in December the project that will give the largest boost to global output capacity this year, the state oil company Saudi Aramco said yesterday.

The Khursaniyah project to bring online around 500,000 barrels per day of light crude is more than double the next largest Opec capacity boost due this year.

"Khursaniyah is on schedule for completion in December this year," a Saudi Aramco spokesman said.

In addition to the Arabian Light crude, the development is designed to have production and processing capacity of 300 million standard cubic feet per day of associated gas online in December, he said.

The plan includes the construction of a new gas facility that would eventually boost gas processing at Khursaniyah to one billion feet per day.

Saudi Arabia accelerated its oilfield expansion plans to maintain spare capacity of between 1.5 million to two million bpd to meet growing demand or cover unexpected shortfalls in global supply. It cut preliminary work at Khursaniyah to eight months from 20 months as part of that plan.

Additional increments are scheduled to take the Opec producer's output capacity to 12.5m bpd by 2009 from 11.3m bpd now.

The kingdom's current output is around 8.57m bpd.