Saudi Aramco is prequalifying engineering contractors, including from players beyond its long-term agreement (LTA) pool of contractors, for two packages on the $15bn offshore Marjan Incremental Field Development project.

Aramco moved to involve firms outside its group of five LTA contractors that exclusively bid for its offshore jobs in February when it approached non-LTA players for Packages 1 and 4.

“Saudi Aramco has put the two Marjan packages in the General Bid Slate,” a source told MEED, referring to the mechanism of asking registered firms to express interest for specific jobs. “Hopefully [non-LTA] firms will have the opportunity to bid.”

Aramco is expected to tender the two packages in September.

Apart from the five current LTA players, South Korean contractors Hyundai and Daewoo and Malaysia’s Sapura Energy are understood to be among the non-LTA players that have expressed interest in the two packages.

Package 1 relates to building of a Gas Oil Separation Plant (GOSP-4) and crude export pipeline. The scope of the project is to build new offshore facilities such as platforms and additional pipelines to link to a new gas facility in Tanajib on the kingdom’s Gulf coast, and from Tanajib to the expanded natural gas liquid (NGL) facility in Khursaniyah.

GOSP-4 will handle 475,000 barrels a day of crude, total liquid of 813,000 barrels of condensates and 747 million standard cubic feet of associated gas. After processing, the residual heavy crude will be blended with oil from Aramco’s Safaniya offshore mega field and shipped to the refinery at Ras Tanura for processing.

Package 4 calls for the building of offshore gas facilities at the Marjan development. The scope of work includes tie-in platforms and production platforms for gas.

A string of onshore and offshore packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars are due to be tendered during 2018.

The Marjan field is estimated to have the capacity to produce about 500,000 b/d of crude based on current installed production facilities. The field is located in the Gulf, about 85 kilometres northeast of Aramco’s Tanajib oil complex in the Eastern Province.