- RIYADH: General Electric (GE) has won contracts worth almost $500 million to provide equipment and services to a remote Saudi Aramco oil field in the Kingdom’s Empty Quarter.
- The US company was selected by Aramco to outfit the Shaybah oil field with 11 gas turbine generators and other equipment to boost power supply at the site.
The project will enable Saudi Aramco to enhance its oil recovery efforts and spur further economic growth. The announcement came at GE’s “Power of Partnerships” Media Day that took place at the Al-Khozama Hotel in Riyadh on Tuesday. “This latest project with Saudi Aramco reflects GE’s commitment to localization and sustainable growth in the Kingdom, “ said Joseph Anis, GE Energy’s president for the Middle East
“Over the last eight years our relation with the Kingdom has expanded putting ahead three main points — how can we help Saudi Arabia achieve objectives in industry, build its capability to save energy and serve society,” said Nabil Habayeb, president and CEO of GE Middle East and Africa, while reviewing the company’s work in the Kingdom since 1940.
Shaybah is located in the Kingdom’s Empty Quarter and is already highly productive, following a 50 percent capacity upgrade in June 2009 from half a million barrels per day (bpd) to 750,000 bpd of Arabian Extra Light crude.
The new expansion is expected to enable Saudi Aramco to further increase crude production to one million bpd and increase the gas-oil ratio of the field from 1,800 to 7,200 standard cubic feet (scfd) per stock tank barrel.
GE will generate an additional 729 megawatts of power, and is supplying 11 gas turbine-generators and 44 compressors, motors and services. This will bring the total supply of GE gas turbines to Saudi Aramco to more than 110, and the number of GE centrifugal compressors to nearly 100.
A key feature of the expansion, the valuable natural gas liquid (NGL) components from gas produced at Shaybah will be recovered through the construction of the new Sabkha NGL recovery plant which will process 2.4 billion scfd of low-sulfur sweet gas and extract 264,000 bpd of NGL. The gas is used in petrochemical applications.
GE will ship the equipment during the first half of 2012. In addition, services and training will be provided through the GE Energy Manufacturing Technology Center in Dammam. The 10,000 sqm facility was constructed at a cost of $100 million.
