Saudi Aramco has awarded the US’ Baker Hughes a $400m five-year turnkey onshore drilling contract for the Shaybah field in the southeast of Saudi Arabia.

The contract involves Baker Hughes drilling more than 70 wells over the five-year time scale. The scope will include providing drilling rigs, wireline logging, cementing and mud engineering, as well as directional and horizontal drilling. There is scope to finish the contract sooner if all the wells are completed.

“This contract is similar to that signed by [the US’] Halliburton in 2009 and shows Aramco is still interested in making strategic turnkey drilling awards,” says an oil industry source based in Saudi Arabia. “Baker Hughes has done well to secure this deal because Halliburton probably thought it was the favourite to get it.”  

Halliburton was awarded a five-year contract in 2009 to provide similar drilling services for the onshore Ghawar field, the world’s largest oilfield.

The Shaybah field is located in the deserted Empty Quarter province of the kingdom and has a capacity of 750,000 barrels a day (b/d) of oil.

In 2011, Aramco awarded Samsung Engineering four contracts worth a combined $3bn to construct natural gas liquids (NGL) facilities at the field. When completed, the facilities will separate 228,000 b/d of NGLs from the crude oil produced.