LNG

Saipem, the Italian LNG and energy engineering company, has completed the South Gas Compression Plant Pipelines project to increase the life of a substantial number of natural gas wells in the Haradh and Hawiyah fields in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) project is aimed at reducing the use of oil and increasing the use of natural gas as the primary fuel for several local industries.

Saipem, based in Milan, said the scope of work encompassed the procurement and construction of a system of pipelines of various diameters, with an overall length of over 700 kilometres (435 miles).

The venture additionally included flowlines, trunklines, and transmission lines, as well as associated facilities for the transportation of gas from various points of storage and distribution inside the facilities, such as liquid station separations, remote headers, gas gathering manifolds and off plot tie-in facilities.

Challenges

“The project presented challenges from a logistics, safety, security and project management point of view,” stated Saipem.

Dhahran-based Aramco has said that increasing natural gas output was a strategic priority and the company had successfully advanced multiple gas projects in 2023.

The Haradh and Hawiyah fields for associated gas are key projects.

Aramco’s Hawiyah Gas Plant expansion is part of the Haradh gas increment programme.

Construction at the Hawiyah Unayzah Gas Reservoir Storage, the first underground natural gas storage project in the Kingdom, has also been completed and injection activities commenced.

Aramco made two large natural gas field discoveries in November 2023 while additionally starting output in a Saudi shale gas basin called South Ghawar.

The two Saudi natural gas field discoveries were made in the Eastern Province and the Empty Quarter regions respectively.

Saudi shale gas

Analysts said that the discovery of more natural gas reservoirs is expected to further Aramco’s strategic plans to increase gas production by over 50 percent with the aim of meeting all domestic demand by 2030.

Earlier in November Aramco announced that it had begun production of unconventional tight gas from its South Ghawar operational area, two months ahead of schedule.

Unconventional tight gas, also known as shale gas, is typically found in reserves where hydrocarbons are tightly trapped within rock layers.

Extracting this gas demands specialised techniques like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing for extraction.

The commissioned facilities at South Ghawar currently have a processing capacity of 300 million standard cubic feet per day of raw gas and 38,000 barrels per day for condensate.

Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco), the world’s largest seller of crude oil, reported an almost 40 percent rise in third-quarter net income to $42.4 billion as global crude oil prices were affected by “continued economic uncertainty” and it forecast that oil demand would continue to grow for the rest of the decade.

A heavy-lifting, transportation and installation contract has been awarded to privately held Dutch company Mammoet for Saudi Aramco’s natural gas storage and gas resources management project, the Aramco Hawiyah Unayzah Gas Reservoir Storage venture, located 260 kilometres (160 miles) east of Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh.