Aramco pushes ahead with Nuayyim development

07 April 2006
International contractors, with their in-kingdom partners, responded by 3 April to a solicitation of interest for the Nuayyim oil field redevelopment project. Nuayyim will be the latest oil field development to be undertaken by Saudi Aramco in its programme to add over 2 million barrels a day (b/d) of new crude handling capacity by 2010 (MEED 17:2:06).

Estimated to be worth $700 million-1,000 million, the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract will entail the construction of a 100,000-b/d gas-oil separation plant (GOSP), a gas gathering and compression complex, a gas dehydration unit and water injection facilities.

It will also include the revamp of the existing crude and gas pipelines and pumping stations. The redevelopment is aimed at the production of 100,000 b/d of Arab Super Light crude by June 2008.

A team of Australia's Clough Group with Houston-based S&B Engineers & Constructors and local firms Al-Bilad and Zuhair Fayez Partnership Consultants has prepared the front-end engineering and design (FEED) package.

Aramco is scheduled to hold in mid-May a job explanation meeting in Dhahran. A tender for the EPC contract is due to be issued in early June and will be followed by a bidding period of at least 60 days.

Located southwest of the giant Ghawar field, Nuayyim is estimated to have reserves of 250 million barrels. The field was brought into production in early 1997, but the facilities were subsequently mothballed.

Nuayyim, with Hawtah, Hazmiyah, Ghinah and Umm Jurf all located in the centre of the kingdom is home to Aramco's Arab Super Light reserves. Production from the fields is linked to a central GOSP at Hawtah, with a capacity of at least 300,000 b/d. Crude oil from the fields is pumped via a 325-kilometre pipeline to pumping station (PS) 3 on the east-west main oil line, which transports it to the Yanbu export terminal on the Red Sea.

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