Saudi Aramco to expand Khurais and Shaybah oil fields
After years to push ahead its refining and petrochemical activities, Saudi Aramco is coming back to its upstream core business in preparing the expansion of the giant Khurais and Shaybah oil and gas fields.
As the most influential member of the OPEC organization, Saudi Arabia is intending to keep the lead of the crude oil production in the world.
Over the last months the oil map has changed slightly with some Middle-East countries such as Libya and Iran cutting their production for different reasons and the USA ramping up their production faster than expected.
In parallel numbers of crude oil fields are reaching the maturity level exposing Saudi Arabia to run production at full capacity in the near future and preventing the world largest crude oil producer to play its regulating role in the market.
In this context the need to restore crude oil free production capacity popped up on the top of Saudi Aramco agenda for the coming years.
In a first step Saudi Aramco selected the Khurais and Shaybah giant oil fields offering significant opportunities to increase the production in some pockets of the reservoirs left untapped or under-developed.
At Khurais, Saudi Aramco picked up the Abu Jiffan and Mazalij in the south while at Shaybah they will boost the south of the reservoir.
In addition, in Shaybah Saudi Aramco will take the opportunity of this crude oil expansion to also boost the gathering of the associated gas and related natural gas liquids (NGL).
Foster Wheeler awarded FEED for Khurais Expansion
Through these Khurais and Shaybah expansion projects, Saudi Aramco is targeting by 2017 to add 550,000 barrels per day (b/d) of crude oil where:
– Khurais should increase by 300,000 b/d from the current 1.2 million b/d to 1.5 million b/d
– Shaybah should contribute with 250,000 b/d from the current 750,000 b/d to 1 million b/d.
In September 2013, Saudi Aramco awarded to Foster Wheeler the front end engineering and design (FEED) contract for the Khurais Expansion project.
In Khurais the expansion project should include:
– Crude handling and stabilization facilities
– Gas compression facilities
– Gathering pipelines system
– Offsites and utilities
Previously to this contract Foster Wheeler had performed the FEED of the first development phase in Khurais in 2005 and had also executed the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract for the Khurais gas central processing facility which started operations in 2009.
With an estimated budget of $3 billion capital expenditure, Saudi Aramco is expecting the FEED conclusion on Khurais from Foster Wheeler in 2014 for an effective production in 2017.
