HARADH, 19 January 2004 — Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and Commander of the National Guard, yesterday inaugurated Saudi Aramco’s Haradh Natural Gas and Oil Development Project and said that it was a reflection of the country’s development.
Petroleum and Mineral Resources Minister Ali Al-Naimi and Saudi Aramco President and CEO Abdullah S. Jumah received the crown prince who arrived in the afternoon.
He was given a guided tour of the facilities and briefed about various aspects of the project. Prince Abdullah congratulated all those involved in the project and said that it was yet another landmark achievement of Saudi Aramco.
The completed mega-project consists of a giant gas plant capable of delivering 1.5 billion standard cubic feet per day of sales gas to Saudi Arabia’s Master Gas System, and a state-of-the-art gas oil separation plant (GOSP) capable of stabilizing 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Arabian Light crude oil.
The GOSP associated with the Haradh Natural Gas and Oil Development Project — called GOSP-2 — also includes a 130 million standard cubic foot associated gas gathering facility. In addition to the sales gas, Haradh Gas Plant is designed to deliver 170,000 barrels per day (bpd) of high-value condensates to Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq processing facility and can produce 90 metric tons of sulfur per day for export.
Al-Naimi said the Haradh project is only one of the links in the Kingdom’s integrated economic policy: to optimize utilization of available natural resources, taking into consideration the Kingdom’s relative advantages of abundant, relatively cheap energy to propel the national industrialization and development drive, stimulate economic growth and avoid exclusive dependence on crude oil exports.
Jumah pointed out some specific advantages of the Haradh Gas Plant, the Kingdom’s second plant built specifically to process non-associated gas.
“This expansion allows, among other things, for the allocation of gas to several major petrochemical projects and massive industrial complexes to be accomplished during the coming five years, with investments of SR75 billion,” Jumah said, adding that this would create thousands of jobs for young Saudis.
He also pointed out that the GOSP added significant production capacity.
“If we take into consideration a similar plant (GOSP-1) completed here by Saudi Aramco two years ago, and the plant under construction (GOSP-3) which will be completed during the next two years, Haradh area’s daily production will amount to 900,000 barrels of oil — a level exceeding the production of several oil producing countries,” Jumah said.
Not only does the Haradh project use new engineering concepts and new technology for greater long-term efficiency, it was also completed ahead of schedule, significantly under budget, with about 50 million man-hours of work and without a lost-day incident. The project management and operation team of the mammoth project was 98 percent Saudi.
