As Saudi Arabia hosts a key oil summit in Riyadh this weekend, its national oil company, Saudi Aramco, has begun testing new facilities in the Khursaniyah field that are expected to raise the kingdom’s production capacity by about 500,000 barrels a day by early next year.

The extra capacity will cover almost a quarter of next year’s projected rise in demand, estimated by the International Energy Agency (IEA) – the west’s energy watchdog – at 2.1m b/d. For Ali Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, this is proof that fears of an imminent “supply crunch” are inaccurate.