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The hydrocarbons giant Saudi Aramco has announced that work has started on the Karan Gas Program in the KSA.
In a statement the company said that the four contractors who were awarded tenders, contractors J. Ray McDermott (US), Hyundai Engineering and Construction Co. (South Korea), Petrofac (UK) and GS Engineering (South Korea), had all started operations.
“The start of fabrication and construction reflects how our project team has risen to meet our challenge of meeting the Kingdom’s future need for gas in a safe, environmentally responsible and high quality manner,” Fuad Al-Azman, manager of Karan Gas Projects Department said.
The statement also said that various milestones set by Aramco had already been met. In September, the Offshore Platforms and Subsea Pipeline package began fabrication of 30,000 metric tons of steel for 38 structures.
The three onshore packages — Karan Gas Facilities, Pipeline Utilities and Cogeneration, and the Karan Sulfur Recovery and Manifa Gas Facilities — have also begun initial construction activities at Khursaniyah.
Karan is the first non-associated offshore gas field to be developed by Aramco. The onshore facility, about 160 kilometers north of Dhahran, will have the capacity to process 1.8 billion standard cubic feet per day (scfd) of Karan Khuff gas.
The gas will be transported through the network in a 110-kilometer subsea pipeline from the field to onshore processing facilities at the Khursaniyah Gas Plant.
Gas will be processed through three trains, each with a capacity of 600 million scfd, at Khursaniyah. The trains will include facilities for gas sweetening, acid-gas enrichment, gas dehydration and supplementary propane refrigeration.
The facilities also will include a cogeneration plant with boiler, a sulfur recovery unit with storage tank, substations and a transmission pipeline linked to the Kingdom’s Master Gas System.
The first phase of the project, aimed at producing 450 million scfd by mid-2011. The exact value of the project, or the separate contracts has not been disclosed.
