ALKHOBAR: Saudi Aramco plans to invite bids for contracts for gas facilities at its Arabiyah gas field and Shaybah oil field in the second quarter of 2010, sources at companies considering bidding said.
Aramco is shifting its exploration and production focus to developing gas supply to meet rapidly rising domestic demand after completing a massive crude capacity expansion this year.
The world’s top oil exporter is experiencing annual gas demand growth of 7 percent per year as oil revenues fuel economic expansion.
Preliminary design and engineering work and project management contracts for the two projects will be awarded in September, contractors said.
The early design should be completed in the second quarter, after which the bidding packages for building the facilities will be issued, they said.
Arabiyah is one of two offshore gas fields non-associated with oil that Aramco discovered in January. The other was Hasbah. It is unclear how much gas Arabiyah alone could pump, but the two together could supply 1.8 billion cubic feet per day (cfd) of gas. The Arabiyah gas development program includes gas processing facilities, platforms and subsea pipelines that will be built at the 900,000 bpd Moneefa oil field.
The project was scheduled to come on stream in February 2014, one contractor said.
An executive at Aramco told Reuters in May that the state-run firm will build a gas plant at Moneefa. The plant will process 1 billion cfd of gas from Arabiyah and Hasbah, he said. Aramco has yet to finalize how it would develop the gas processing facilities. It will either build a new plant in Moneefa or expand the existing facilities there, one source said. At Shaybah, Aramco plans to build a natural gas liquids (NGL) recovery plant. Work includes building a natural gas liquids splitter and debottlenecking gas-oil separation plants, sources said.
Shaybah’s gas facilities will be ready by March 2014 and on stream in May 2014.
Shaybah, in the Empty Quarter, is the last of three oil field projects due to come on line this year that conclude Saudi crude expansion plans to take total production capacity to 12.5 million barrels per day (bpd).
The expansion of Shaybah would take capacity at the field to 750,000 bpd. Aramco uses gas from Shaybah for reinjection to maintain reservoir pressure.
Aramco plans to raise its non-associated gas processing capacity to 9 billion cfd by 2015 from 6.2 billion cfd currently to meet soaring demand for industrial use in the Kingdom.
Meanwhile, Aramco and US ConocoPhillips plan to award contracts to build a joint venture refinery in Saudi Arabia in May 2010, sources at contractors said.
