“It’s not final… it’s an order of magnitude. The engineering design that we’re doing between now and the end of the year will determine the price”, he said.

Bahrain currently imports some 230,000brl/d of oil from Saudi Arabia. The new pipeline will have a capacity of 350,000brl/d, and Bahrain plans a $ 2-billion expansion of its Sitra refinery, to boost capacity to about 360,000brl/d by 2016. The expansion depends on getting increased supplies from Saudi Arabia. “Most probably the pipeline will be there before the refinery capacity,” Mr al-Sayed said. “We have future plans for (added) refinery capacity.” The new pipeline may be re-routed from its current route, which runs from Abqaiq to Dhahran in Saudi Arabia and then on to Bahrain, to a potential new route that will run directly from Abqaiq, and south of the existing pipeline in Bahrain.