RIYADH, June 30 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Aramco announced Sunday that it has awarded 16 contracts worth around 12.4 billion U.S. dollars for the phase-two development of the kingdom's largest unconventional gas field Jafurah.
The Saudi energy giant said in a statement that the contracted projects involve the construction of gas compression facilities and associated pipelines, as well as the expansion of the Jafurah Gas Plant, including gas processing trains, utilities, sulfur, and export facilities.
The contracts also include the construction of Aramco's new Riyas natural gas liquids (NGL) fractionation facilities in Jubail to process NGL received from Jafurah, said the statement, without detailing with which entities and when the contracts were made.
Aramco has also signed 15 lump-sum turnkey contracts totaling 8.8 billion dollars to build 4,000 km of pipelines and 17 new gas compression trains by 2028 to expand one of its biggest energy projects, Master Gas System, by size and total capacity. The project is already underway in collaboration with the Ministry of Energy, the statement added.
The above contracts, together with another 23 gas rig contracts, two drilling contracts, and 13 well tie-in contracts at Jafurah, valued at more than 25 billion dollars in total, will serve the company's goal of increasing sales gas production by more than 60 percent by 2030 from the 2021 level.
Containing an estimated 200 trillion standard cubic feet of natural gas, the Jafurah field is the largest liquid-rich shale gas play in the Middle East, said an Aramco webpage introducing Jafurah.
The company expects the field to be commissioned in 2030, producing over 420 million standard cubic feet of ethane and around 630,000 barrels of NGL and condensates per day. ■
