Over 50 per cent of work on Bahrain-Saudi oil pipeline complete

25 January 2018
Half the replacement and upgradation work on the new oil pipeline has been completed, according to Bahrain’s Oil Minister

About half the work on the ageing oil pipeline transporting crude oil from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain’s Sitra refinery has been completed, according to Bahrain’s Oil Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa al-Khalifa.

More than 50 per cent of the replacement and upgradation works to replace the present 70-year-old pipeline has been completed, according to Al-Khalifa.

The minister was quoted by the official Bahrain News Agency as saying that the project “is steadily moving according to the plan”, adding that the pipeline would be operational by 2018-end.

Al-Khalifa has also revealed that the new pipeline would be buried underground, and would pass by far from residential areas.

More importantly, he has said, it would be monitored by security agencies. MEED understands this may be in light of the recent pipeline fire in November that sabotaged oil operations in the kingdom, an incident that Bahrain termed as “a terrorist act by Iran.”

Since 2014, Bahrain has been planning to build the new oil pipeline with Saudi, to import crude oil for its refinery. The new 115km-long pipeline is estimated to have a carrying capacity of 350,000 barrels a day (b/d) to replace the ageing 230,000 b/d pipeline.

The estimated cost of this project is about $300m. The new pipeline is 100km longer than the old one and is away from residential areas, which were uninhabited when the old pipeline was first built.

Bahrain has been importing 230,000 b/d of oil from Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura oil field, since decades through the existing pipeline, to be refined at the country’s main refinery at Sitra, the Bahrain Refinery.

The new pipeline project also has strategic significance, not only in terms of replacing the old pipeline (which had less capacity and higher maintenance costs), but also to increase the import capacity from 230,000 b/d to 350,000 b/day.

The new pipeline will enable Sitra refinery’s operator the Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) to expand the processing capacity of the plant – which currently refines 267,000 b/d – to about 400,000 b/d, as it steps up oil imports from its larger neighbour Saudi Arabia.

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