Update On Oilfield Expansion Projects In Saudi Arabia -- June 29, 2016

Aramco, SABIC sign pact on new plant -- Bloomberg video. Previously posted. This is part of Prince Salman's "Vision 2030" plan. Previously posted. Not only is there nothing new, so far this is simply "talk." The video: lots of talk; little information.

Khurais Oil Field

Adjacent To The World's Largest Oilfield, The Ghawar Trend

Khurais Megaproject

This project was initially proposed to be completed by 2017, then pushed back to 2018, and it appears this project is now pushed back to be completed no sooner than late 2019.

Wiki.

From the June 27 - July 3, 2016 issue of Oil & Gas News:

Saudi Aramco is expected to make a decision in June whether to go ahead with the $3- billion Khurais oilfield expansion project in the Eastern Province under the present market conditions.

The company is currently locked in negotiations with Saipem, the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor for the $2-billion central processing facilities (CPF) package, with a view to lowering project costs, decelerating construction works and better cash flow management.

However, Aramco has also said that if substantial cost savings are not possible after the engineering phase is completed, it could cancel the whole project. The engineering work is now being undertaken by Saipem. The current slow-down in works has also extended the completion deadline to late 2019.

The Khurais Arabian Light Crude Increment project, as it is also known, is an onshore oilfield development which was initially discovered in 1957. By 2009, the central procession facility at Khurais had a processing capacity of 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil and 320 million cu ft per day (cfd) of associated gas, as well as 80,000 bpd of natural gas liquids. 

From March 30, 2016, Bloomberg:

Saudi Arabian Oil Co. is pressing ahead with an expansion of the Khurais oil field despite lower crude prices and plans to double its production of natural gas over the next 10 years.

The world’s biggest oil exporter, known as Saudi Aramco, won’t cancel any oil, gas or refining projects, Amin Nasser told reporters during a conference in Al-Ahsa in eastern Saudi Arabia. Aramco is also studying a possible expansion of the country’s largest oil refinery, Ras Tanura, which has a capacity of 550,000 barrels a day.

“Until now all of our downstream and upstream projects are continuous,” Nasser said. “No project in our programs got canceled.”

From November 8, 2015, TradeArabia:

Saudi Arabia is moving ahead with the expansion of its giant Khurais oilfield but the project would move slower than originally planned because of budgetary reasons.

Since global oil prices fell sharply last year, national oil company Saudi Aramco has slowed some projects, shelving less important ones and asking for discounts on some contracts which it had awarded. The project plans to raise Khurais' output by 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 1.5 mbpd, and allow it to produce 143 million standard cubic feet per day of associated gas and 34,000 bpd of natural gas liquids.

The original time frame to complete the expansion was 2017.

Industry sources told Reuters in September that Khurais expansion was delayed.

Now Saudi-based industry sources say Khurais expansion is still on but will take longer than expected, with possible completion in 2018. "Khurais is going ahead but not as fast because of the budget," one industry source said. 

From September 3, 2015, ConstructionWeek:

The expansion of Saudi Arabia's Khurais oilfield is likely to be delayed from its originally planned timeframe of 2017. 

Consequently, the start-up date of the project is now unclear. 

Plummeting global oil prices are being attributed for the delay, despite the absence of official comment on the development.

Undated, but probably mid-2009, from Hydrocarbons-Technology:

The Khurais oilfield development was the largest of several Saudi Aramco projects intended to boost the production capacity of Saudi Arabia's oilfields from 11.3 million bpd to 12.5 million bpd by 2009.

The Khurais project as a whole covers three oilfields: Khurais, Abu Jifan and Mazalij. The Khurais field, with an area of 2,890km² and 127km long, located about 250km south-west of Dhahran and 300km north south-east of Riyadh, is the biggest in the project. Abu Jifan covers 520km² south-west of Khurais and Mazalij covers 1,630km² south-east of Abu Jifan.

In 2009, the project added 1.2 million bpd of high-quality Arabian light crude to Saudi Arabia's export capacity. The Khurais programme also increased the capacity of the Qurayyah seawater injection system by 4.5 million bpd of treated water for injection at the Khurais and South Ghawar fields in 2008. The total project cost is estimated to be about $10bn.

The drilling was completed in February 2009, ten months ahead of the scheduled three-year duration. Production at the oilfield began on 10 June 2009. 

Khurais is located on a large structural trend to the west of, and parallel to, the Ghawar trend.

Because of this superficial resemblance to Ghawar, there were high hopes that the Khurais reservoir would be comparably large; however, it turned out that it was much smaller and not as high quality as Ghawar, though it is still the largest of the proposed projects.

Variable reservoir quality had also been a problem at Khurais. Pilot-scale production at Khurais began in 1963, but the field was never fully developed. It produces Arab light crude.

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Shaybah Oil Field

A Super-Giant Oil Field In Saudi Arabia 

Wiki 

From April 25, 2016, Bloomberg:

Saudi Arabian Oil Co. will complete the expansion of its Shaybah oilfield by the end of May, 2016, allowing the biggest crude exporter in the world to maintain its total production capacity, according to two people with knowledge of the plan.

Shaybah’s output capacity will rise to 1 million barrels a day from 750,000 barrels, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public.

The field, in the Empty Quarter desert near the border with the United Arab Emirates, produces extra light grade crude with an API gravity of 42 degrees, they said.
Shaybah’s expansion will help Saudi Aramco, as the state producer is known, keep the company’s capacity at 12 million barrels a day, they said. 

From June 25, 2015, ArabNews:

As part of Saudi Aramco’s mega projects, it is implementing expansion plans at Shaybah field in the Empty Quarter to increase oil production capacity and natural gas liquids (NGL) at an estimated cost of SR186.75 billion. Saudi Aramco's joint projects in the field of refining and petrochemical production are estimated at SR131.25 billion. 

The Shaybah field expansion focuses on two major projects. First is oil production increase by 250,000 barrels per day (bpd), for the second time. The expansion will provide the Shaybah field with a capacity of 1 million bpd of Arabian Extra Light crude oil by April, 2016, double its initial capacity in 1998.

Moreover, the Saudi oil company is working to improve the design of wells to increase the average reservoir contact to 10 km, enhancing production from the deep, tight faces of the reservoir.

As for the second project, Saudi Aramco will construct a new NGL plant, to meet the growing demand for petrochemical feedstock through the extraction of high value NGL of the produced gas, which is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2015.

The NGL plant project also includes a major upgrade to increase the power generation capacity to more than 1 GW by installing four cogeneration units, seven single cycle units, and a 50 km transmission line with the ability of 230 kilovolt.