Gas production contracts awarded by Aramco
Development programmes for Jafurah gas field and the Master Gas System are worth in excess of $25bn
Aramco has awarded contracts worth more than US $25bn to progress its strategic gas expansion; this targets sales gas production growth of more than 60% by 2030.
Announcing the contract awards, Aramco said the scope of work includes Phase II development of the Jafurah unconventional gas field, as well as Phase III expansion of Aramco’s Master Gas System, along with new gas rigs and ongoing capacity maintenance.
The Jafurah unconventional gas field is estimated to contain 229 trillion standard cu/ft of raw gas and 75bn stock tank barrels of condensate. According to Aramco, Phase I of the Jafurah development programme, which commenced in November 2021, is progressing as per schedule with initial start-up likely next year (during Q3).
Aramco expects total overall lifecycle investment at Jafurah to exceed $100bn, and production to reach a sustainable sales gas rate of two billion standard cu/ft per day by 2030, in addition to significant volumes of ethane, NGL and condensate.
The development will operate via Aramco’s Master Gas System, an extensive network of pipelines that connects Aramco’s key gas production and processing sites throughout the Kingdom.
On the contract award, President & CEO, Amin H. Nasser said, “The scale of our ongoing investment at Jafurah and the expansion of our Master Gas System underscores our intention to further integrate and grow our gas business to meet anticipated rising demand.”
“This complements the diversification of our portfolio, creates new employment opportunities, and supports the Kingdom’s transition towards a lower-emission power grid, in which gas and renewables gradually displace liquids-based power generation. To get where we are today, a lot of hard work, innovation and a strong ‘can do’ spirit has been demonstrated by teams across our vast network of suppliers and service providers, who have joined Aramco on this journey to build and expand our world-class energy infrastructure,” he added.
The ongoing work will also involve construction of the company’s new Riyas Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) fractionation facilities in Jubail – including NGL fractionation trains, and utilities, storage and export facilities – to process the NGL received from Jafurah.
According to Aramco, a further 15 lump sum turnkey contracts, worth a combined total of around $8.8bn, have been awarded to commence the phase three expansion of the Master Gas System.
The expansion, being conducted in collaboration with the Ministry of Energy, will increase the size of the network and raise its total capacity by an additional 3.15bn standard cu/ft per day by 2028, through the installation of around 4,000km of pipelines and 17 new gas compression trains.
