RIYADH, 13 January 2007 — Saudi Aramco postponed the commissioning of the 500,000 bpd Khursaniyah oil and gas project to the fourth quarter of the year, a few months later than the previously announced date without giving the reason for the delay, Al-Eqtisadiah newspaper reported yesterday. Company sources had earlier said the Khursaniyah oil and gas project would be ready for production in June 2007.
The project is being constructed about 140 kilometers northwest of Dhahran, spread over an area of 50 square kilometers.
The program includes grassroots oil production facilities that will produce 500,000 bpd of Arabian Light (AL) crude oil from the Abu Hadriyah, Fadhili, and Khursaniyah fields.
It also includes a gas plant to process 1 billion standard cubic feet per day (scfd) of associated gas and 80,000 bpd of hydrocarbon condensate to produce 600 million scfd of sales gas and 280,000 bpd of C2+ NGL.
In addition, the program will install central utilities, including two cogeneration units each with a capacity of 150 megawatts as well as water treatment and steam generation facilities to serve Khursaniyah Producing Facilities (KPF) and Khursaniyah Gas Plant (KGP). KPF and KGP are the heart of the Khursaniyah Program and are scheduled to produce oil and process gas in 2007’s fourth quarter.
An 800-km network of upstream and downstream pipelines will be installed to transport 500,000 bpd of crude oil from the AFK fields to KPF as well as feed KGP with Safaniya condensate and associated gas streams from Berri, Marjan and Safaniya.
The downstream products pipeline will transport stabilized AL crude oil to Juaymah Terminal for export, sales gas to be injected into the existing Berri Junction Sales Gas Grid and the ethane plus natural gas liquids (NGL) to Ju’aymah Gas Plant for further processing. The program will also provide industrial facilities that include a core-area complex of administration buildings as well as centers to support the operation of Khursaniyah Facilities.
There are 20 construction contractors working together to provide the labor, procure all the materials and construct the facilities. The contractors said that a multinational labor force of more than 30,000 workers will complete the project, which has created jobs for more than 2,800 Saudi employees.
KPD has estimated that the project will use about half a million cubic meters of concrete, more than 95,000 tons of structural steel, 1,500 km of piping, 6,000 km of power lines, 200 km of fiber-optic cables and 800 km of trunk lines and pipelines.
“With this magnitude of work, we realized early on the challenges that we would face and knew that conventional execution strategies would not allow us to meet our objectives,” said Program Director Ghalib Al-Alwan.
“Consequently, we engaged local manufacturers in both structural steel and pressure-vessel industries and procured material purchase orders ahead of time,” Ghalib added.
“We know we have a big challenge ahead of us, and it’s going to be a tough team effort but we are very confident that we can make this a successful project,” a contractor said.
A first for any project, Al-Alwan said, was a vendor-operated on-site pressure vessel shop. “The Khursaniyah project team is confident that the program will exceed all expectations,” said Al-Alwan, “leaving behind a proud and memorable legacy called Khursaniyah.”
