Oil and gas company Saudi Aramco said it is currently operating about 220 drilling rigs as it sees continued investment in capacity. Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister, Khalid Al-Falih, said it comes despite low oil prices, Energy Voice informed.

Al-Falih, who is also chairman of Aramco, said that continuous investment in drilling enables Saudi Arabia to offset the gradual decline in output from mature fields and that the kingdom is maintaining production capacity at 12.

5mb/d, according to Reuters.

He added: “Aramco can capitalize on low production costs to increase funding for these ongoing investments from its own resources, and they have absolutely not been affected by the drop in prices.”

In the past couple of years Aramco has saved on drilling costs by obtaining discounts from oil field service companies and suppliers.

Furthermore, Falih reiterated on Sunday that an additional 300,000b/d of oil from expansion of the Khurais oil field, which would come on stream in 2018, would compensate for declining fields elsewhere and not add to capacity.