Aramco to seek bids for gasfield contracts

KHOBAR: Saudi Aramco is planning to invite bids for gas facilities contracts at its Arabiyah gasfield and Shaybah oilfield in the second quarter of next year, sources said yesterday.

The company 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 seven per cent 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 gasfields 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 programme includes gas processing facilities, platforms and subsea pipelines that will be built at the 900,000 bpd Moneefa oilfield.

The project was scheduled to come on stream in February 2014, one contractor said.

An Aramco executive said earlier that the state-run firm will build a gas plant at Moneefa. The plant will process 1bn cfd of gas from Arabiyah and Hasbah, he said.

At Shaybah, Aramco plans to build a natural gas liquids 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.

Source : Gulf Daily News